Saturday, January 3, 2026

The Silent Canvas

I brought him

an infinity of words—

not as gifts,

but as burdens.


I brought constellations of meaning,

like stars that burn unseen,

countless skeletal lines of images

embedded deep

in the black marrow of language.


His starving mind lunged forward

to possess them.

He took a scalpel to words,

cut them open,

peeled their silence apart,

determined to steal

Every hidden frame they held.


Insatiable—

He demanded more.


He wanted infinity

resting like a crown

upon his skull.


Lost inside a grotesque tangle of language,

His mind began to tremble.

He begged for terminology.

He trusted nothing naked,

nothing simple.


He required compound words—

engineered,

polished,

comfortably familiar with their luxury.


He wanted names—

So he could believe

that something new had been created,

that the neurons of the brain

had bloomed in borrowed colours.


And I gave him what he asked for!

The words,

the images,

slipped away on their own terms,

vanishing behind the shelter

of known names—

where meaning goes

to disappear.


Dr. Shaheen Mahmud

03/01/2026

 

 

 

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