The signal blinks like breath held tight,
A mannequin trapped in broad daylight.
Each rider wears a borrowed face,
Stamped by routine, framed into place.
A thousand ties and ticking clocks,
The city claps in echo-box.
I ride between the sighs and norms,
A myth unmade in moving form.
The helmet shields, the mirror spies,
These roles we wear, these practiced lies.
A worker, dreamer, shape, or shade—
Each name a cage our hands have made.
The skyline chants its rusted tune,
A hymn half-sung beneath the moon.
But I—just breeze on wheels and rust,
Escaping rules we’re taught to trust.
The engine hums a monk’s reply,
While static billboards crowd the sky.
The stranger’s stare, the shuttered shops,
All stitched into the system’s props.
Yet life persists in broken signs,
In coffee cups and crooked lines.
The road ahead may not be true,
But still I chase its shifting hue.
Then—crack!—the sky unzips its chest,
And storms the playhouse of the dressed.
No speech, no stage, no masquerade,
Just thunder taking back the shade.
The rain pours down on every name,
And washes off both guilt and claim.
What we pretended, who we were,
Now floats away, a whispered blur.
The droplets drum on sun-warmed skin,
And tap at thoughts long held within.
The roles dissolve, the signs go dim—
The storm rewrites the daily hymn.
I slow beneath a crooked tree,
Its branches humming wild and free.
For once, no part, no plan, no pace—
Just breath, just rain, just open space.
The gutters sing like ghosted choirs,
And streetlights hum with wet-wired fires.
No walls remain of pride or shame,
Just water carving out a name.
Each crack in concrete sprouts a sound—
A whisper buried underground.
And somewhere past the broken glass,
I see myself begin to pass.
When wheels roll home through soft decay,
They trail the hush of yesterday.
The world may call it loss or mess,
But I have found a kind of yes.
The silence here is not defeat,
But space where worn-out thoughts retreat.
Not all who drift are chasing flight—
Some ride to feel the absence right.
I do not write to be believed,
But to unburden what I’ve grieved.
No banners wave, no masks remain—
Just echoes softened out by rain.
I rode through roles I couldn’t keep,
Through smiles rehearsed and silence deep.
And what was left, beneath the ache,
Was something real I dared not fake.