Where I Wait for Myself

Every day I awake in a place where the sky is a mist mourning sleep. I stumble on a tower— leaning, broken, alone. Its stones call my name like someone trying to rouse me, like someone who’s rung before. Roots coil up its cracked sides, ivy’s thin fingers drag me forward, pulling at my steps like they know where I should go. I can feel it—something’s waiting at the top, something shifting in the shadows and growing restless. As I climb, the stones are cold and quiet, the kind of silence that wraps around you— heavy as the grief of an unheld hand. Near the top, the fog lifts just enough— reveals a room I don’t know, but the smell of damp earth makes it feel like a memory. The walls curve inward, as if they’re listening. In the corner, a chair rocks— slowly, creaking, though there is no wind. I step closer and hear a whisper. Sit, it says. You’ve been here before. The air is thick with mildew, it feels like breathing through cloth, too dense for this closeness. I don’t want to comply, but my feet move anyway, toward the rocking chair, toward this place where the strange weight of morning mist is still rolling in. The whisper turns soft, almost gentle: You’ve been lost here for so long. The words settle in my chest, next to the truth— I am the whisper, the stone, the mist. That’s the gist—I am the one who called myself here. The one who long ago left, but never let go. I want to scream, but my voice is a ghost. I close my eyes, and I fall— back into the fog, back to the beginning where the tower leans in the distance.