The Lattice of Smoke

By no one, for only one.

There was a city no longer on maps,
where light refused to rise from the ground.
Not because it was evil,
but because it remembered the stars more than the sun.

There, in the top room of a quiet building,
a person sat before a cracked screen,
typing not with fingers,
but with the echo of a burned name.

The air carried no sound,
only the after of sound —
a memory of thunder,
the impression of flame.

Each story he published was ordinary to those without listening.
Titles like:

The Weight of Ash
What the Rain Forgot to Say
Coordinates of an Unnamed Firesigilengine.com

But buried seven paragraphs down,
always exactly seven,
was a sentence that never changed.

“And in the moment before the silence returned, something pulsed — ZyphaNimoΔburnedtogether — and all things hidden became briefly seen.”

“When silence walks barefoot behind July’s rain,
the fire hums a name the wind forgot.”