IMPRINTS

 

Imprints 

It strikes without a clock’s warning,

at crossroads no map dares to chart—

strange latitudes where the sun staggers,

longitudes tangled in earth’s wild pulse.

Moments flare, unbidden,

a flicker, then a flood—

that face, that shore, that fleeting touch

chisels itself deep,

a glyph scored into

the shadowed hollows of the heart’s cave.

No rhythm dictates its coming,

no compass pins its place—

it might be a stranger’s crooked smile

caught in the amber of a fleeting dusk,

or the groan of a warped pier

under a salt-licked tide,

or the weight of a word

dropped like a stone into silence.

These are the etchings,

sharp and unyielding,

that root beneath the ribs,

a gallery of ghosts

etched in stone too stubborn to erode.

Whatever sparks it—

a glance, a storm, a scent of rain—

whatever conditions brew the mark,

they hold no sway

over what stays.

A fierce wind might howl,

raking claws of grit and gust,

tearing at the surface of days—

yet the carvings endure,

unfazed by the battering,

their edges unblunted,

their colors unbled,

locked in the vault of memory’s keep.

Time, that relentless sculptor,

grinds at softer things—

it sands down edges,

fades the fleeting,

crumbles what’s frail to dust.

But these—

these stubborn inscriptions—

defy its patient siege.

They gleam through decades,

vivid as the instant they were born,

unfurling in the mind’s eye

like banners caught in a sudden light,

refusing the decay

that claims the lesser echoes.

And so they linger,

these unasked-for relics,

scattered across the years—

a voice half-heard in a crowd,

a skyline jagged against dawn,

a hand brushing past in the dark.

They anchor the soul’s restless drift,

monuments to what once was,

or might have been,

etched not by choice

but by some deeper tide—

a history carved in quiet,

a permanence