Ritual Memory

I wake in a place that does not know my name,
where the air is thick with lost prayers,
and the sky hums with voices I cannot place.

Somewhere, a flame flickers—
a beacon, or a warning.
I step forward, bare feet on cold stone,
but the earth does not answer.

Was I always meant to be a ghost?
A relic in a temple no one worships?
They dressed me in gold once,
offered their hands, their hymns—
but now, only silence kneels before me.

I press my palm to the altar,
its surface smooth, untouched by time.
A name forms on my tongue—
yours, maybe. Or mine.
But the wind takes it before I can know.

And so I walk on, weightless, fading,
a dream slipping between waking and dusk.
A god with no worshippers.
A soul with no body to haunt.