The Quill’s Echo in the Quiet Room
A bureau ancient, worn by season’s hand,
Where whispered thoughts in ink and parchment told
Unfold the restless mind, the soul unmanned;
There sits the Écrivain, veiled in twilight’s shroud,
A haunted heart within a double frame,
By contradictions wrought—a silent cloud—
His life a mirror fractured, none to blame.
Upon the desk, a plume with tip worn thin,
Its feathers cracked from battles borne unseen,
Like conscience etched by doubts from deep within,
It dances ‘twixt the realms of what had been.
He dips it slow—each stroke a measured breath—
The words emerge like phantoms from the haze,
A tortured cadence weaving life and death,
In cadence wrought of dark and fleeting days.
O, mortal coil! That complex web you weave,
Entwined with threads of night and shimmering dawn,
The self that is, yet is not, that deceives,
And questions which the soul dares not disown.
The Écrivain’s gaze, two suns eclipsed in gloom,
Reflects the starlit sky and shadowed deep,
A restless sea confined within a room,
Where waves of being rise, then fall to sleep.
He writes of one who walks a narrow strand,
A figure split by choice and circumstance,
Her footsteps divide the shifting sand—
To which shore shall she yield her fleeting glance?
Is she the tempest or the placid shore?
The wolf that howls or lamb’s subdued refrain?
Or both—a pair of masks worn evermore,
A dance of joy embraced by whispered pain?
“O soul, that clamors ‘gainst thy very self,”
He murmurs low as ink adorns the page,
“Dost thou not tire of this eternal pelf,
A hoard of questions locked in gilded cage?”
Yet parchment stays unyielding to his wish,
Each line a lantern in the boundless night,
A fragile bridge from flesh to word’s cold dish,
Where intellect and feeling both ignite.
The night descends; the bureau light now gleams,
A candle’s glow that flickers with his breath,
Within its flames, a theater of dreams,
Where life and death entwine, and birth meets death.
He pauses there—the quill hovers mid-air,
Caught twixt the yearning of the heart and mind;
A silent battle fought beyond despair,
In quiet moments where no peace he’ll find.
The specter of duality’s cruel jest
Mocks him with whispers drawn from deep within,
A tug-of-war that knows no final rest,
Between the sacred and the human sin.
Two selves contend beneath his waning light,
One yearning for the dawn’s untainted grace,
The other lost in ever-looming night,
A shadowed twin that none can dare erase.
Once more his hand resumes its fluid flight,
Inscribing tales of souls caught in the storm,
A dance of darkness waltzing with the light,
Two halves that shape the figure yet unborn.
In every verse, a mirror shattered wide—
Fragments of thought that seek to intertwine,
The tangled woods where secret fears abide,
And hope, like ivy, clings with tendrils fine.
His ink now flows as tempest parts the sky,
A torrent spilling from his mind’s abyss,
Words threaded gold midst thunder’s mournful cry,
Echoes of loss and long forgotten bliss.
“Am I but both?” he asks the empty room,
“A phantom caught between my past and dream,
A prisoner bound within my own gloom,
Or traveler adrift on life’s dark stream?”
The bureau creaks beneath the weight of time,
As hours wane and dawn begins to creep,
The Écrivain’s gaze turns inward, sublime,
A silent soliloquy that shadows keep.
“Oh, fleeting self, do you not seek release?
From tangled roads where dual spirits haunt,
To find that place where all the turmoils cease,
Beyond the mirrored veil that daunts and taunts?”
Yet knowledge bears no key, no sweet reprieve,
Only the more profound enigma’s face,
A labyrinth where dream and doubt deceive,
And truth eludes the seeker’s fierce embrace.
His quill now rests upon the aged wood,
His spirit caught between the dusk and dawn,
Ambiguous fate—both darkness and the good—
A riddle whispered soft, forever drawn.
So in that chamber, where the past persists,
An Écrivain stands guard o’er twin domains,
His heart a compass torn by mist and mists,
His pen the link in sorrow’s heavy chains.
No final word can close the book he writes,
No answer ends the quest that haunts his soul,
The dawn arrives; still flicker candlelights—
In restless hearts, duality makes whole.
