In the twilight where shadows whisper secrets of forgotten epochs

In the twilight where shadows whisper secrets of forgotten epochs, An old man stands, a spindly relic of a bygone era, So brittle he could shatter through himself, From crown to root, A cathedral of detritus, Each layer a sigil of time's cryptic runes. No mirror needed to see the strata of his life, Crimson layers of sorrow from the auto deaths Of father and sister, deaths stacked like cordwood In the sanctum of his soul, his body a 60-kilogram vessel Of ravaged nerve endings, etched by the alchemy of disease. The relic holds no sympathy for itself, For a life is but a life, Woven among birds, forests, and fields, A symphony of nature’s arcane whispers, Knowing many dogs, a few bears, and wolves. Some women whispered they wished to weave spells of demise upon him, But what worth is there in such enchantments? The body, perhaps, The criminal body, enacting arcane rites, doing and undoing, A vessel of mortal incantations. Some seek miraculous gold Within the rubble and find the old man's gold in empty stew cans. In the esoteric labyrinth of his consciousness, he wanders, A pilgrim on the thread of existence, Unspooling with each step, A gossamer strand breaking under the weight of aeons. Each layer of debris a story, A sigh in the cold evening breeze, A layer of blood, A layer of pain, A layer of lost love. In the inner sanctum of his being, Where memories are stacked like sacred texts, His body, a criminal of mere existence, is judged By the shadows of the night. In those empty stew cans, Seekers of arcane treasures find not gold, But stories, shattered dreams, and lost hopes, A heap of illusions, A mound of life lived among birds and forests, A life without pity for itself, Without remorse, just a dance Of memories in the wind. And so, the old man, a spindly heap of remnants, Loses himself in the esoteric flow of his consciousness, A river of thoughts winding through the forests of time, Across fields of forgetfulness, a river that never ceases, Until the final breath.