I went where pleasure said it would be kind.
The door stood open; no one barred the way.
Rooms learned my name. The mirrors changed their mind.
A figure in the corner worked itself away.
The faces drifted—father, friend, and host—
one mouth rehearsed in several borrowed skins.
A shade crossed steadily from post to post,
each tree a hinge the night kept closing in.
I did not run. The floor took hold of me.
Heat pooled in roots that branched around my mind.
My mouth filled last; my body learned to be
a wick in earth that never quite goes dry.
I found a clearing, harboring this rule:
what enters once will never leave you whole.

I. The Boy Who Keeps

The key was given once to a boy who stood
inside the library, between the stacks.
It opened what could not be understood
except by one who never answered back.
It was not small. It spanned the years and ground
alike, and waited for the proper strain.
It opened you. That knowledge would be found
in time, through him, where loss becomes domain.
She placed him there because he did not sleep,
because he would not turn when called away.
He kept what you would lose and could not keep
and stood where dust and naming briefly stay.
The key was what you were and would become.
She gave it to the boy. He waits. It comes.

II. The One Who Takes

The key lay pressed against his face, a mark
the body bore as plainly as a scar.
A wound held fast within the listless dark,
where pain instructs and nothing drifts too far.
She placed it there because that place would make
it cost to give, and cost again to keep.
Its forging was not his; he stayed awake
to guard what others lose or leave to sleep.
You placed it where the breath and word align,
where flesh gives way and speech becomes a test.
You took his watch. The hours fell in line.
He turned, or slept. The duty passed.
You are what he became when it was done.
You take the wound. The watch. The work. The sum.