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Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
"Some stages are best abandoned—
let the desperate perform for an audience
that no longer watches." |
The One Who Walked Away
There had always been two.
Not halves of a whole — no, never so generous a fate.
More like mismatched notes scratched onto opposite corners of a forgotten score.
Both sounding off at once, too proud to listen, too foolish to stop.
Once, Under a Split Sky
Once, long ago, under a sun so full it almost split the sky, a voice had said—
a thing about wings too bright to touch, too restless to hold.
And oh, how sweetly the words had fallen,
spun of vanity and violet-tinged dreams.
The other — watching — had simply laughed inside, lips never moving.
Pretty things flutter fast, after all.
But even the brightest wings end up crushed between careless fingers.
Another Crown, Another Illusion
Another day, another crown of illusions:
one claiming to be the story, the other dismissed as a footnote.
Yes, of course.
The page, flimsy and passing, curling under the smallest heat.
The book, heavy, closing itself shut—a tomb of its own self-importance.
The listeners had smiled then too,
a little thinner, a little colder.
And when that final little phrase,
so tender in its poison,
had been tossed into the air —
an accusation whispered by someone too stripped to cover themselves anymore —
how difficult it was not to laugh aloud.
How magnificently the pride had wounded itself,
all without a single blow.
The War That Ended
Now, it is a grand and listless play.
One figure still writhes, frantic in a war long lost,
gnawing at old insults like brittle bones.
Corrosive envy paints their gaze a sickly green,
hands clutching at nothing but smoke.
Each small fury — so petty it almost gleams —
makes the audience yawn behind velvet gloves.
Above It All
The other?
There is no battle left to fight.
Only a throne built of tedium, higher and higher,
where even disdain struggles to climb.
There is a kind of mercy offered, perhaps—
a tilted smile, a soft, hollow sympathy
that almost sounds like kindness if one doesn’t listen too closely.
But it is not mercy.
It is amusement.
It is boredom.
And when the struggling one spits their old lines again,
mouthing them like spells whose power has long since drained away,
the other merely watches.
Bright wings scatter in the mind like dust motes now.
Not even the warmth of recognition left behind.
The Empty Theatre
There is no winner here, no triumph to claim.
Only one standing on the stage, soaked in sickened obsession,
and the other leaning lazily against the edge of memory,
too weary to even applaud.
The show ended long ago.
It is only pride that refuses to leave the theatre.
And somewhere, faint and lazy,
the applause still echoes—
but it is not for the fool still dancing.
It is for the one who walked away.
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