A World Without Pages

In this hollowed world,

where books never breathed their ink,

we craft stories from silence.

The map before me,

spider-webbed with time,

tells of lands I cannot name—

a riddle without language,

a journey without guide.

They say we amuse ourselves with mimicry.

The beetle on the shelf becomes a hero,

its armor glinting under dying light.

We press its shadow onto parchment,

sketching tales in shapes

we dare not speak aloud.

I have seen them spin threads of entertainment

from objects hollow and strange:

a compass with no true north,

a clock that ticks in whispers.

They gather in dim rooms,

passing relics like secrets,

their laughter the only melody left.

But without books,

the stories fade as quickly as they form.

The words live only in the mouths of tellers,

their shapes scattered like ash in the wind.

And when the tellers die,

the tales are buried with them.

I long for permanence—

the weight of a tome heavy in my hands,

the brittle crackle of pages

under a wandering thumb.

But instead, we carve dreams into air,

etching fantasies into fleeting moments.

In the absence of words,

we build empires of dust,

palaces of insects and clocks.

And when night falls,

we sit in silence,

imagining worlds that can never be held.