A gathering of souls, tender and true,

Drawn to sorrow like moths to dew.

Faces—some cherished, some unknown,

But grief, not rage, has deeper grown.

Near my ear, a voice begins,

A tale that floats on memory’s winds—

“Of golden days with silver light,

Of fingers scented with rice so white,

Hands that fed with love’s old art,

A fleeting world, a fragile start.

We built a home in quiet delight,

Just for two, beneath soft night.

But it was made of cards, I see—

Too late, when wind erased it free.

Not a card lay torn or torn apart,

No fragments left to touch the heart.

Had they remained, I might have tried

To piece them back with trembling pride,

Rebuild the house, though doomed to fall—

For hope still danced in memory’s hall.

Within my heart, it stands complete—

Red, blue, pink—so soft, so sweet,

Bathed in blush and silken white,

A dream aglow with gentle light.”

But the kindred souls grew few and far—

Some gave wisdom like falling stars,

Some turned away, with quiet grace,

To leave no trace, no backward face.

And now, when paths by chance align,

They do not flee or call me “mad.”

So I keep the tales I once had—

The card house and the fairy pink,

Locked in my mind’s forgotten brink.

Yet sometimes, from that quiet cage,

Wings flutter soft in silent rage.

Perhaps it stirs to tell me so—

It dreams of flight. It longs to go.