I worked in colours no sun could hold,
in blues that bruised the air,
in golds that kept their heartbeat
long after candles guttered there.
Montsalvat was just young then,
all scaffolds, dust, and dream;
yet something in its mortar
knew more of me than seemed.
I felt it first in the winter:
a sunken tremor in the lead,
a warmth inside the glass I cut
as though the glass itself had bled.
My lantern was my confidant,
my witness and my sin;
I fed it slivers of my life
and it fed back its grin.
They said I left in ’28.
They said I lost my way.
But walls remember differently
than people ever say.
The cellar called me downward,
three knocks upon cold stone;
a rhythm not quite a heartbeat,
definitely not my own.
I followed with my lantern,
its glow my borrowed breath;
Finding the place where colour
leans too close to death.
If you should find my panel,
unfinished, half‑awake,
know this: I did not vanish.
I was taken for the sake
of every shard that wanted
a life beyond the frame;
for glass is only silent
until you speak its name.
So listen when it pulses.
Step lightly when it gleams.
I am still here in the lantern,
and the lantern keeps my dreams.