CRIMSON

 CRIMSON

In the whisper-thin streets of this watchful town,
she's the enigma they label "unhinged"—
that solitary soul, cloaked in shifting crowns
of synthetic strands, reinvented each dawn. As if the sun's first light could splinter her core,
birthing facets in crimson, obsidian, gold—
a kaleidoscope self, barricaded behind
four iron sentinels, bolted against the unseen tide. An elusive specter haunts her shadowed gaze,
invisible to the crowd, yet vivid in her veins:
a force that coils like smoke, defying the day.
Neighbors circle like vultures, trading shifts at her gate, peering for secrets in the sliver she grants—
a threshold she clings to, unyielding as stone.
Her child, nine tender years, has vanished into ether,
and she cradles the map, the motive, the myth. They prod with their stares: "Who hides beneath the guise?
We see through the charade—it's always you."
But the truer riddle echoes in the void:
Who does she believe she has become? Time slips like sand through desperate fists,
eroding the edge of hope's fragile shore.
What mercy awaits a girl adrift in the vast
American expanse, wild and uncharted? Until a key turns in her fortress of fear—
a voice that pierces the veil, dissolves the dread—
we chase shadows to phantom lands,
faces blurred, futures fractured, unresolved.