Parchment

Chimes

Call to me

Chimes

Sing to me

Chimes

Tell me to go

To search

To learn

-

All that’s left

Of what once was

Is rubble and metal and bones

-

Books of history and bloodshed are rare

But show us the world of yesteryear

The one we left behind

-

The sickness that pulled

the earth to its knees

Left it crippled - hobbled - weakened

Revealed the weakness buried beneath

The rotting carcass of progress

-

Until all that was left was just

A village of myths and tales

Until all that was left was us

A people of steam and tusks

-

From the stories we are told

From the ones we continue to tell

The tale of our people’s pitfalls

Is one we all know well

-

Chimes

Call to me

Chimes

Talk to me

Chimes

Tell me to go

To search

To learn

-

A gate can only be built so high

To keep those in

Who don’t want to find out more

But I want to find out more

-

Sun, do you have to follow me?

To the outskirts of this city beyond?

The dirt of the paths well-trodden

Mark my feet with a pale coat of dust

-

I dance on the cracks of the once-roads

Arrows pointing straight to the heart

Of a place full of walls high as birds glide

Or at least the ones that haven’t fallen

-

The edge of this world that once was

Is dusted and crumbled and bone

But it feels as though it has something

It feels I need to know

-

The sight never ceases to wonder

The brokenness spreading so wide

Oh what people could have lived here?

And did they know they were going to die?

-

Chimes

Call to me

Chimes

Sing to me

Chimes

Urge me to go deeper

To search longer

To learn more

-

I dig and I search and I find

Souls lost in addition to mine

Would they know the same traps that I fear?

That life’s more than just cogs to a gear

-

I dig and I search and I find

Souls lost in addition to mine

They must’ve known the same cracks in my chest

The questions that refuse to let me rest

-

All my life I’ve been called to this place beyond

Past the fences and locks and threats

In this life, I will quest to the past abroad

Remove this gathering weight from my chest

-

All the roads seem to lead here

Pointing at a brittle land of dust

All my life I have been drawn here

To the unsettled sand of the past

-

And though I can’t see past the rubble

I feel I am part of it all

I can’t peer past the metal rust and bars

I know I am part of the call

-

Did someone hear my question?

What is this slip of something?

Parchment - more questions than ink

A map of my world - but it can’t be

Who are these others?

These people I’ve never seen?

-

Chimes

Call to me

Chimes

Talk to me

Chimes

Tell me to stay

To search

To learn