The silent scribe

In a house of ticking clocks,

where sunlight falls in muted beams through lace curtains,

I dwelt, a spectator in a script penned by unseen hands—

each day a turn in a novel I never authored.

The mirror held a face I barely recognized,

its eyes shadowed by the weight of borrowed dreams,

as if my soul had donned a mask at birth,

and played a part unbidden in the theater of the world.

The days unraveled like old parchment,

etched with events I scarcely touched,

each moment a fragment of a tale

that drifted by like leaves in a windless glade.

Then, one dawn, the revelation—

that the ink of the story was of my own making,

the pen I thought so alien was clasped in my hand,

inscribing the very sorrows I had long observed from afar.

Now, amid the silence of an empty room,

where shadows linger like whispered secrets,

I find solace in the stillness,

a reprieve from the clamor of masquerades and false scenes.

Yet, as I drift through gatherings,

my presence feels like a ghost’s passing—

the crowd’s murmur a distant echo,

each social gesture a page in a book I struggle to read.

I sit, a recluse in my own narrative,

where freedom is not the absence of chains,

but the quiet acceptance of my solitary role—

life, once an unclaimed script, now an echo of my own choosing.