Words escape in guilty flight,
Rushed, unmeant, unmade.
Powerful enough to make us feel alone
In each other’s enchanted company.
Building a wall, invisible, yet unyielding.
Brick,
By brick.
Layer,
By layer.

Funny, how that’s what captivates me about you—
Steadfast, like a pillar standing for millennia,
Resolute, enduring, beneath the weight of time,
In a forgotten cistern under Istanbul's streets.

I was never there to destroy you.
Nor to be unseen, with my back against the quiet ruins,
Witness to the passing of time—
And all it would claim,
Give us, take from us.
A silent force, stitched into the threads of oblivion.

I become an anxious fox,
Climbing,
Climbing!
Climbing,
With every breath, rising higher.
The apex is out of reach,
Is it even within grasp?

Yet I am caught in the wrong pursuit.
I see, I know...
This ascent pulls me farther from where I’m meant to be.
Then vows rush forth like spells.
Echoes of dreams once closer than your smile.
Hollow,
For they need more than words to take root.
Yet here I am,
Still standing,
Despite the silence,
Despite the divide that lingers.

At last, I found my way.
I’m ready to act,
For monsters are capricious,
Rarely but surely they will turn this opaque chasm into fragile glass,
And I am ready to shatter it,
To find you, to grasp your hand, and soar into our story
Ever told.