Fugue City

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