Beneath the clock’s unyielding face, I count the minutes I erase. A whisper curls around the light— the echo of a vanished night. The stars pretend they do not see the way the dark unravels me. I wear a smile, thin and precise, a frozen mask of thawless ice. The wind forgets to say my name, yet touches all I cannot tame. A leaf departs without goodbye— just like the truth we learn to lie. I plant my hopes in barren ground, where dreams don’t speak and roots aren’t found. Still, silence hums beneath my skin— a place where poems might begin.