brooding tips and vellum amiss
we sit in pools of silken leather
cracked by winter
and salted by the summer leave
we last longer
and change colours
by time's metronome.

sometimes I wonder if my soul is sleeping in a city I've never set foot in
just aspects of my imagination
uncertain of whether this city even exists
or if its a remaining remnant of a real
long misunderstood
and little said beyond a few sentences
with a darkened moon
and a reddish sky
that reflects itself on clouded days inside my mouth
they play music there so quiet no one could hear
not high pitched like a mosquito
but the low rumbling of a plane halfway across the world
almost innate and interior
you can hear it with your body
as the musicians strike at strings so thick they could be the snakes from medusa's own head

this city is anterior
a figurative of a verb used in the past that is assumed to have happened
but not official
and this is where my soul lays?
not chained like a bird
or caged like a lion
but rather wandering
or leaving me wandering
soulless in another realm
incapable of even understanding the despair we clutch at
or the love we thrive from
and in this I believe I am lucky
sinless and free
to escape from the immobility that extreme emotion provides
and fleeing, desiring, reeling in the books that provide them for me.