There’s a ruin in this room
Of a novel not written.
I asked too much of it.
Thoughts never caught up
with words here.
And the solitude became insufferable.
The room is tainted like a photograph
in which I see myself smiling,
arrogantly it seems,
for no other reason than to smile.
“I’m pleasant enough,”
the room says,
“but like your smile,
I am hollow.”
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