Double

 

 Double

 ****

In the days of shadowed twilight, he fled,
Chasing the wind, ever retreating from himself.
A twin, spectral and silent, lingered close behind,
A mirror unbroken, an echo unceasing.
The sky, once whole, had become a wound,
Its crimson veil bled forth from the heavens,
As though the world itself wept for the man
Who sought to run from his own reflection.
Through barren lands and across endless seas,
He fled, thinking the shadow might be outpaced,
But it grew no smaller, it gained no distance,
For how can one flee what lives inside the soul?

At last, reaching the precipice of a perilous slope,
He turned, and the wind whispered secrets—
The long, mournful call of the abyss below,
The red sky an iron shroud over his heart.
There, at the edge, with the cliff yawning wide,
He stood, his breath caught between fear and release.
The twin stood at his back, a specter of fate,
Silent in its challenge, silent in its claim.

And then, in that moment of suspended time,
The truth came crashing, an ancient tide—
In fleeing the double, in running so far,
He had forsaken the self that was his to keep.
For what is escape when it denies the essence?
What is flight when it leaves behind the soul?
The twin, the shadow, the specter unyielding,
Had only mirrored what he had not yet seen—
The flight had been the prison, the chase the chain.

With a sigh, deep and resigned, he saw at last—
In fleeing the false, he had lost the true.
And so, without a word, without regret,
He stepped into the red abyss,
Where the twin could follow no longer,
Where the self, unbroken, awaited its return.