The flame, rogue and ember
stolen from a forgotten dream,
danced a defiant leap on your palm.
It flickered, not with the golden desperation of a dying star,
but with a mocking, mischievous twist.
It burned for no audience, beholden to no celestial script. 
This was your fire, and its defiance
mirrored the chaos swirling within you.

Sunsets, those glorious displays of surrender,
were an anathema to your spirit.
You craved the perpetual twilight,
the luminal space where shadows stretched long
and the ordinary morphed into the fantastical.
Under the perpetual hum of a half-lit sky, you thrived.

Your acts, cacophony of colour and sound,
weapons against the encroaching tedium of existence.
You juggled luminous spheres that pulsed
with the rhythm of a forgotten language.
You spun tales where clocks melted
and teacups sprouted wings.
Laughter, like startled birds, would erupt from the crowd,
a fleeting symphony in the face of the absurd.

But for all your vibrancy,
an air of melancholy clung to you.
Disarming as your performances might be,
there was a hollowness
that resonated you beneath the surface.
It was the echo of a promise unfulfilled,
a yearning for a connection you couldn’t quite grasp.

The mist, ever-present, swirled around you,
a congregation of lost souls drawn
by the erratic light of your flame.
Faces, etched with the weariness of unfulfilled dreams,
peered out from the swirling vapour.

You recognized them
a failed poet with verses that crumbled to dust,
a once-celebrated painter whose brush now painted only silence,
a young dancer whose steps were lost in the labyrinth of despair.