To Stop Running

Lyrics

The same silver corridor again.
The one that indexes itself.
Each door is a page from the last time I was here.
And the sound is always behind me. A comma, chasing the end of a sentence.
My breath, a bookmark I can't place.
The air tastes like cool metal and panic.
Left turn into a library of identical halls.
Right turn into a gallery where all the portraits are mirrors, and all the mirrors are running.
My legs are not mine. They are the engine of this place.
The labyrinth's only exit is to run faster.
And then, the echo stopped.
The sound of not-running.
A held breath in the architecture of the chase.
The air thickens into glass.
There was a bench carved from a fallen numeral.
And on it, the shadow I was born running from.
The Hat Man, the door-frame flicker, the thought that follows.
Just sitting. Hands open on his knees, tired.
The static at his edges had gone soft.
I sat down. The silver was cold enough to be real.
I asked it. My voice a crack in the glass.
"What do you want?"
I looked down at my hands to count, to be sure. Seven fingers.
I looked again. Four. The air didn't ripple.
The world just watched.
And the shadow answered, not with a voice, but with the memory of one.
"To stop running."
And so, the echo stopped.
The sound of not-running.
A held breath in the architecture of the chase.
The air softens into light.
We watched the sunset.
A slow closing of a silver book on the horizon.
The buildings of polished obsidian went dark, floor by floor.
He didn't fade. I didn't wake.
We just sat there.
Two facing pages at the end of a long chapter.
The running was over. The running was us.