Atlas of abandoned paths

He traced a fretful chart
through coffee-rings on butcher’s paper,
each curl a throbbing heart.

Pencil-hail skipped and scored,
plotting the A-side of intention,
then ripping at the chord.

Forty-seven drafts took flight,
smudged confessions on the tabletop;
graphite ghosts of night.

A cracked alarm barked “Go!”
His sockets burned; the sunrise waited,
boots muttered, “Maybe so.”

Road gravel kissed his soles,
pepper-hot; inside the sting he tasted
half-remembered goals.

Steam of sharp bergamot
uncoiled from chipped porcelain,
tying his tongue in knot.

An underpass in rust
showed Prufrock’s dare in bleeding spray,
through concrete, rain, and dust.

He mouthed the line, went mute;
tea cooled to glassy doubt while mist
pin-pricked a crooked snoot.

With shrug of paper wings
he left the cup, the woman’s glance,
the hour’s nagging rings.

At mile thirteen he met
a mirror-traveller, shoes still shining,
alphabet complete.

Her feather-light rucksack
ticked like a distant metronome;
his own pack growled back.

“Z’s a cul-de-sac,” she grinned,
and tossed confetti alphabets;
letters skinned and thinned.

She pressed into his palm
a map that shimmered slick as oil,
each waypoint stamped perhaps.

GPS kept glitching:
“2B … NOT FOUND—re-route, re-route,”
an inner code-switch itching.

His heartbeat upped the pace;
he sealed the map inside his coat,
left tremor in its place.

An elixir-cart rolled near,
brass vials of mercury fizz announcing
shortcuts out of fear.

He drank; metallic zing
whipped tongue into a marching drum,
and gravel learned to sing.

Boot-leather struck in time;
till gears mis-clicked; his knees betrayed him,
cadence turned to mime.

Cliff face, chalk-white with glare,
invited flight—one foot stepped outward,
the other nailed in air.

Vertigo’s velvet hush
opened a parenthesis of doubt;
he coloured it with blush.

 * breath*  * breath*
silence tightened round the rim
of his unspoken death.

He crawled to safer soil,
spat iron filings from his gums,
resumed the futile toil.

A market-inn at dusk:
pastry crumbs like constellations
starred his trembling husk.

He bartered pride for sleep,
devised a boot of baling twine,
a compass mesmerised.

At dawn the cogs refused;
the lever sobbed, the needle whirled,
his ego stood accused.

He inked a blame-list long,
black threads spidering the page-grain,
bitter as bruised oolong.

Mirror puddle showed cracks;
he shattered it to stop reflection,
still sensed the furtive tracks.

Through nettles he limped bare,
green lashes striping ankle-skin;
a self-flagellant’s prayer.

Fog thick as drying ink
erased the verge, erased his shadow,
left only thought-smudge brink.

A sagging sign declared
Z—one hundred metres. Wind
rehearsed a dirge for tread.

“Z needs an empty drum!”
He fasted till his hollow ribs
knocked time like bone on drum.

He knelt, unlaced one boot,
and asked the grass which way to lean;
it whispered nothing new.

Echoes, faint and thin,
drummed distant heel-beats down the track;
his own, or hers, or twin?

He rose—not east nor west; 
but sideways into whispering dusk;
coffee-rings closed the quest.

F.S.F