Mythmakers Often Miss the Stop

Each moment arrives already threaded— camels crossing through narrowed eyes, yesterday's needles. I see the burden in your face when I get here, but it’s not your face; rather a ripple of something older, residue caught in the glass nothing but an echo of now. Do you see that? A life lived sideways, pressed into the sand. My bus driver is Atlas today, holding a world hostage until I meet his raised eyebrows with an acknowledgment, in addition to the usual fare. The woman on the corner is Circe, turning glances to granite, spinning myths into tricks— even the barista, bean-stained hands, shifts like Persephone, balancing her sweet against the darkness. What is our world if not echoes refracted, meals consumed after death? What is real except an insurrection of stories, clawing at the edges of us, our susceptible flesh, infected with personality? These vaunted archetypes, they hide the hollows in our marrow, make us no match for the maps we mistake for ourselves. You tilt your head, you ask me what I see. I see, I say, I have seen, the echoes came first— shadows carved on walls long before the names, long before the bodies. Go ahead, laugh—step into the light. But remember it moves faster than you think, burns brighter than you see, and always drags its shadow behind.