I. At the Portal

Oh portal set beneath the moon’s pale eye,
A mouth to fate in caverns lined with sleep.
You shimmer at the edge of earth and sky,
Where silence folds the stars in sleepless deep.

You mark the path the dreamer’s feet must tread,
A gate of bone, of breath, of veiled unknown.
You call the lost, the brave, the newly dead—
To step beyond what once was flesh and bone.

No voice within you names the final cost,
Yet all who pass are stripped of borrowed light.
The self is weighed, then scattered, then redrawn—
In you, the dawn forgets what made the night.

I stand before you, soul in quiet flame:
To pass, I must give shape to your name.

II. The Portal’s Query

A voice beyond the veil begins to rise,
It asks no question born of shallow fear.
It reverberates the stillness in the skies,
to speak of truths that silence holds most near.

“Must all be bound to winter’s breathless reign?
Must dreams decay beneath the weight of cold?
Or can the soul, though bent and marked by pain,
Transmute the wound cold seasons tried to mold?”

A Wisp finds the fault lines in the dark,
Where falsehood, flipped, becomes the healing key.
No scream can drown this soft, unyielding spark—
Its wisdom walks where eyes will never see.

I hear it now, within my chest it burns:
A voice that waits until the soul returns.

III. The Travelers Calling

“O traveler, the thread is drawn and tight,
Your shadow leans upon the edge of time.
You walk not lost, but led by inner light—
A fire older than the stars’ own shine.

Cast off the chain that fear would have you wear,
Let sorrow shed its grip like falling rain.
The self shall not be masked, no soul’s despair—
But something deeper none can quite contain.

Embrace the dawn before the dusk draws near,
The path you choose will shape what you become.
Speak not with noise, but let your truth appear—
And let it rise like music from the drum.

A name is more than echo, more than sound—
Find what you are before the veil is bound.”

IV. The Query of Shifting Self

“At noon I stride in skin both old and young,
My shadow stretches through centuries unknown.
I wear the names the world has wrongly sung,
Yet never as one to truly claim my throne.

From cradle cry to final wisp of breath,
Each mask I wear is only part of me.
I walk with time beside me, not as death,
But as the sculptor of identity.

I shift and shimmer, solid, yet unseen—
The mirrored face behind the mask they chose.
No one can bind what lies in what has been,
No name can hold the river as it flows.

A single word dissolves this grand charade:
Name what I am, and see that fear shall fade.”

V. The Portal in Ephemeral Twilight

“At dusk I move where memory folds to mist,
A shape half-dreamed, a song that breathes then dies.
I walk the twin-laced paths that stars have kissed,
Then vanish in the pause between replies.

I am a form that slips from waking thought,
A shadow that one greets yet, can never hold.
I bloom in seconds carelessly unwrought,
And crumble when my stories all grow old.

But still I ask—before I lose my place,
Before the dark reclaims what light forgets—
What name can you bestow upon this face,
When even truth in passing, leaves me only debts?

Speak not to bind me—but to set me free.
Name what I am, and thus, become like me.”

VI. Not a Name but the Act of Naming

“You are the Self—the one who walks between,
The waking breath, the shadow in the flame.
Not fixed in stone, but woven in unseen.
Reflections made more real than given name.

Not one, not none, but ever shifting form,
A flicker held within the mirror’s gaze.
You are the calm within the endless storm,
The word that waits beneath a thousand plays.

No mask defines you, though you wear them all;
No voice contains the silence at your core.
You are the rise, the fall, the heedless call,
The step beyond, the lock, the unseen door.

Becoming still—sprout, root, and seed—
The one who names, and is the name, and need.”

VII. The Dreamfall

A hush unfurls—the forest breathes as one.
No gate swings wide, no trumpet sounds my right.
Instead, the air becomes a silver thrum,
And sky dissolves in spirals made of light.

The riddle’s echo blooms within my chest.
The veil turns thin, then falls like drifting thread.
Each step I take becomes a dream expressed,
And myth begins to speak where once was dread.

I do not fall—but drift, like ash or leaf,
Into a hush where time and space unspool.
No pain. No fear. No end. No known belief—
Just story shaping soul, and silence full.

And in this dream, the myths begin to move.
Their voices speak not facts—but deeper proof.

VIII. The Descent into Dream

I lay atop no bed, nor grounded earth,
But drift in void too wide for breath.
No wind, no pulse—just stillness—a birth,
through threads that glow, yet casts no light—not death.

Then sound returns—a note of something renown,
A call. A chord. A hum of woven flame.
Through that sound, the Dreamfall takes me down,
Beyond the hush where the waking world lays claim.

…

…

…

…

A harp of gold, or memory’s hushed refrain—

Which thread remains, and which must break in pain?