They say the sea was once dark and still,
until the embers fell,
and memory took its shape in water.

Drift deeper, where silence keeps
what the world forgot.
The sea does not speak — it remembers.

Before the air could touch the sand,
the waves had shaped it into being,
and silence shaped all that would become.

Beneath the earth, the pale roots sleep.
They drink of shadow and remain silent.
The soil whispers of what has been.

When the land began to bear its voices —
wind, water, metal —
within each drop a memory rested.

On the pale, barren clearing,
no sound, no wingbeat, no witness.
Even the shadows dream of light.

No song, no voice — only memory remains.
An echo of sediment, of metal, of wind,
a sound that tells no tale, and yet endures.

Where the river meets the salted breath,
old reeds bow low and speak in threads.
Nothing returns the way it left.