The Unwritten Verse

The splintered wood of the attic floor was cool beneath my bare feet, a welcome contrast to the heavy air of the summer afternoon. Dust motes danced in the single shaft of light that pierced the gloom, each one a tiny, ephemeral star in its own private universe. It was here, amidst the forgotten relics of generations past – a moth-eaten shawl, a child’s wooden horse with one eye missing, the faint scent of dried lavender clinging to the air – that I felt most myself. Here, the expectations of the village, the stern pronouncements of my father, the hopeful gaze of Anna, all receded, becoming distant murmurs in the deep quiet.

My worn notebook lay open on my lap, its pages filled with the jagged scrawl of my thoughts. My pen, a simple reed I’d sharpened myself, scratched against the paper, a small sound that seemed to echo the beating of my own restless heart. Words, like shy creatures emerging from the woods, would appear, hesitant at first, then bolder, spilling onto the page in a torrent of longing and observation.

*The sun, a bleeding wound across the sky,* *bleeds gold upon the silent land.* *And I, a shadow, watch it die,* *a stranger in this promised strand.*