When Shadows Confer #poetry

A hush—like velvet swinging from the rafters—  
descends in the hall where memory camps.  
The hands of the clock stagger,  
clapping out time with uncertain knuckles.  
Smoke from a half-remembered candle sifts  
through the corridor’s whisper,  
curving around closets, lacing into the dusk  
that settles atop forgotten ledgers and lamp-black.

Somewhere in the city, an orchestra of tiresome traffic  
murmurs mid-dream,  
but here:  
the lights went off, the room agreed to stay silent,  
the walls decided to stay away from the conspiracy.

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Outside, a stubborn moon rifles through ash-white clouds  
and posts sentry on the sill.  
Beneath her gaze, books loosen their spines in relief,  
retreating from the day’s sharp interrogations.  
Every object, now unshod of shadow,  
clicks softly into the geometry of longing:  
a glass full of thirst, a chair with the persistence of an unsent letter,  
a shivering window looking for something  
to echo.

Night slips its key into the door and enters,  
settling into each corner with diplomatic indifference,  
an envoy from realms neither alive nor gone.

---------

Listen:  
It is not absence, this darkness,  
but the secret theatre of observation.  
The clock, unyoked from obligation, breathes easy.  
Dust twirls, unjudged in the wings.  
Even the cat, kneading loneliness onto the sofa,  
finds sanctuary in this dissolving silence.

Words ferment, restless beneath the tongue,  
unsure if they mean to confess or collude.

And in the hush, the room’s conspiracy  
is to cradle every heartache—unused and unspent—  
to hold secrets so vast  
the night itself leans in,  
curious at the softness of it all.

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Somewhere, a radio hiccups in an upstairs apartment,  
an accidental burst of Mozart’s Requiem  
before the static resumes its watch.  
A midnight draft curls through the gap  
where dreams leak out,  
chilling the spines of half-spoken promises  
left tangled behind the door.

Hands in the dark recall the arithmetic  
of bodies uncounted;  
they memorize the ghost-weight  
of embrace, of pattern, of reason  
left hanging on a nail, just out of reach.

------------

Who writes the minutes of a silent congress?  
Who records the votes when the walls have recused themselves  
and the ceiling, high and aloof,  
leaves every shadow unchecked?

Here—so quiet the air folds in on itself—  
you can taste the intention behind every hesitating breath,  
see the suture of moonlight stitch  
the rug back into dreaming.

The mirrors turn their faces to the wall,  
refusing to witness another soliloquy.  
Chairs crowd together, legs entangled,  
hoping this social occasion will pass without injury.

----------

Once, this room was a festival:  
daylight clattered along the windowpanes,  
voices skipping like stones across the hardwood,  
laughter circulating from armrest to alcove  
like sugared air.  
Once, the walls would have jostled in,  
keen to eavesdrop,  
excited by the possibility of confession.

But now—  
the lights went off, the room agreed to stay silent,  
the walls decided to stay away from the conspiracy.

And it is enough.  
Enough for all that aches and remains,  
enough for sorrow’s unspilled tea.

----------

Let memory not betray this place,  
though it can never be mapped, only entered sideways,  
a garden gate left open by last year’s summer.  
Let memory, like a cautious guest,  
pause before taking a seat,  
brushing the dust from the upholstery of regret.

Still, the night deepens its dialogue,  
succeeding where all interrogation fails:  
it finds you,  
bare,  
honest,  
flayed of every anecdote.

What is left is not nothing—  
it is room.

-----------

Outside, the sky collects itself in silence,  
stars shimmering like withheld tears.  
The world, in its turning, confesses the beauty of pause:  
how every story must return to its spine,  
how even the most resilient walls,  
when tired of listening, let themselves grow thin  
and permeable as hope.

Inside, you sit—  
not waiting, not watching,  
simply present as midnight’s breath.

And the closing act needs no applause,  
only the soft promise  
that when the lights return,  
and the room is flooded once again with color,  
the walls—those now guiltless bystanders—  
will welcome the morning’s laughter  
without asking who, or why, or how it survived the night.

For sometimes, the best conspiracies  
are those in which every silence is sacred,  
the darkness honored,  
and the room keeps no record  
of the secrets  
that passed without echo.