This city is mine.
Built from fracture,
stitched from silence.

The towers lean and waver,
their edges blurring into each other.
Windows flicker like constellations—
suggesting life,
but revealing none.

I walk its empty streets alone.
The only encounters I allow
are with manic manikins I arrange—
posed in cafés,
crowds,
conversations never spoken.
Mumbling ruminations
of what I should have said,
dialogues I’ll now never have.
They do not breathe.
But they do not leave.

This is the refuge I return to:
a city of echoes,
a sanctuary against pain,
a prison I keep locked
from the inside.

Fugue City.
Population: One.

—JON.E.B. | Dissociated