CARDBOARD SHIPS

 CARDBOARD  SHIPS

We breathe hard in the days of unspoken reality. Words crack like dry branches in restless wind. We chase the remains of ourselves in the yards of lost hopes.

Children blow the remnants of cheap dreams; children don’t play. Their feet are bare, their hands are soot-stained, and their eyes—made of glass—melt far, far away from the gaze of other children staring into their pools behind pink houses.

We quietly squeeze through narrow doors; nothing is comfortable anymore. We don’t feel our bodies or our voices; we don’t feel the music, but we listen to it. We don’t feel the images, but we watch them.

We press ourselves against dirty walls. Our feet slip into deep mud. Hungry children cry again; hungry people tremble in pain, and their tears disappear under the sand.

No one talks about illnesses anymore; no one talks about wars anymore. People dissolve like fog over the Seine; people fall like leaves in autumn.

Man disappears again.

We don’t walk; we don’t hear; we don’t see.

We stand, bound in chains of illusion, on cardboard ships that slowly sink.

Paris 2023