I sat between the searing stares,
picturing white highlands—
a glacial otherness shifting
in a slowly heating terrain.

Then, an old script murmured
past inattentive ears.
My stifled voice echoed
in your untamed words.

I hovered, transfixed.
Who might you be?
What drew you to this stage?
The answer remained eclipsed.

We left the noise together
as familiar strangers,
unbound by tribe and order,
persisting in an in-between.

Yesterday: in a thinker’s detachment.
Today: a bard’s daydream.
Tomorrow: a musician’s ethereal tune.

But we linger not in the world’s ways
nor the empty commune.

I imagine our refuge.
A fortress out of sight.
A sanctum, perhaps, of inner might.

Like the snow leopard’s elusion—
a silent defiance of servitude.

Perhaps we are but a quiet resonance.
Perhaps you and I are one in our distance—
the preservers of solitude.