Chasing What Isn’t Mine

The child pursues melodies I’ll never understand, the notes wallowing through my fingertips like grains of sand. But in the distance a flute laughs, softly, a zither weeping its baleful notes— both distant, blunt, and foreign. I fell here once, at the border of sound and silence, hit by a blade I didn’t see coming. Whose shadow loomed, blade in hand? The answer is buried deep in the night, stretching long and wide, refusing to end, refusing to begin.