Old World

We bask in the cool, dark splendor

of a wilderness forgotten.

The radiant sun splashes colors

across the mystic, flowing

mountain stream.

This world contains everything I need.

Its jeweled presence is a haven

that brings everlasting comfort to me—

far away from the perpetual madness

and chaos of our world.

Here, I feel at peace

and one with nature.

My decaying, decrepit body

eases and returns to what it once was

before time and torment rendered it

a sad mockery of its former glory.

Some may say this paradise

is but a figment of my own mind.

Perhaps so.

But I could live here forever

and always call it home.

Then one day, the breeze began to shift.

I noticed something strange in the winds

the trees no longer cast shadows.

The stream did not make

its beautiful babbling sounds.

When I reached down to touch the water,

my hand passed straight through it.

The cold clung to me

like something remembering

its own lost shape.

The sky flickered

a single, silent stutter

as if the world forgot

how to hold itself together.

Mountains bent at impossible angles,

their peaks folding inward

like paper burned at the edges.

A low hum rose from the earth,

not a sound but a feeling,

as though the ground itself

was trying to speak my name

with a mouth it did not have.

Only then did I understand:

this place was never a refuge.

It was the echo of a moment

that refused to die

a memory looping endlessly,

waiting for me to notice

that I was the one

keeping it alive.

When I finally looked up,

the sun was no longer shining—

it was watching.

In that soft tender moment

I had died or at least left

the old world behind.