Three Soft Wounds Burning In The Sky

I observe three soft wounds burning in the sky—rose-colored apertures in the fabric of noon. Their hush folds over the lake like static, flattening depth into a single, endless surface. Pines bow at the margins, their needles shivering with a code only the abandoned can read.

The shoreline offers me two choices: step forward and dissolve into the mirror, or remain on sand that registers every footfall as an error in transmission. Either way, I am an arithmetic of exile, divided by horizons that never reconcile.

Somewhere between the first pulse and the third, memory stalls. The mountains lose their gradients, the water its reflection, and I my definitive outline. What survives is the faint suspicion that the world is a rehearsal, repeated until even silence forgets its cue.