I am bound to this place
I am bound to this place.
When we are lost to each other
the faces out of the fog
do not turn my way.
From the old tower I watch the streets become
the burrowed fingers of the underlands,
that descend and hold the earth
and their mute passengers
with a deathless grip.
My own fleeting time
is spilled onto the grey
outlines of spreading stone,
memories find new foundations
that keep me where I walk.
Every footstep engraves a deeper trace
onto this city of a tomb.
I can only find myself
in the narrow passages
and crevices where darkness leads
to where there once was life
before me.
Between the aging sodium streetlamps
and the darkness to which
their ailing light offers itself
so freely,
this heart is given
to the concrete.
A deathly shell,
constricting.
My body rises with every grace
of the liminal,
where the cold surface blurs
into the fog.
Every limb is pulled outwards,
tied to the grey walls that divide
the living ghosts.
I am bound to this place.
Tim JL is a young creative living in London who enjoys the arts, photography, music and cats while trying to make sense of anxiety and imagining a better world. He has previously been published in Impostor, and he is due to be published in Issue III of Intangible Magazine. He can be found on Instagram @mr.timnus and Twitter @amanoutoftim.