CITIES OF QUIET TRACES

Eris White

In a world constantly shifting beneath our feet, the quiet yet persistent themes of time, love, solitude, and healing form a subtle architecture of emotional resonance, drawing the reader into spaces where meaning is felt more than declared. These works move with a soft cadence, crafting an emotional landscape not through force, but through the steady layering of gentle detail and tender observation. There is a sense of time not as a calendar, but as a felt presence – elusive and dissolving – echoing in places once touched, now stilled. Love and longing emerge not with flourish but through the smallest acts: a voice in steam, an empty seat on a train, an absence so full it reshapes the atmosphere around it. Nature, often overlooked in urban life, pulses quietly here – not as scenery, but as a companion to the inner world, where cracks in pavement cradle weeds, and bark remembers histories deeper than speech. These texts resist punctuation and formality, letting language drift and breathe as people do in moments of reflection. Urban in setting yet soulful in tone, they offer a modern, intimate window into the experience of being human – walking alone at night, watching light shift on concrete, or pausing in the aftermath of grief, not for resolution, but for stillness. In the background, always, a subtle call – toward presence, toward place, toward something that, though fragile, refuses to vanish.

1/grains

Time holds its breath in this room
dust whispers down in silence
where your touch used to rest on the sill

leaves fold into gold
fold into brown
fold into nothing
and the tree, no sign of grieve

i walk through this hour
like it’s made of silk
unravelling at the hem

city breathes beneath my feet
a pulse of engines and rain
the sky keeps changing its mind

like sand through fingers
like rain slipping through the cracks of a roof

2/maybe

your voice is in the coffee steam
curled and rising
while the world is still folded in blue

i leave you a space on the train
next to me
between the chatter and the cold glass

we never said goodbye
just stayed tangled in the gap between
like cities holding fog
like winter holding flame

i loved you in lowercase
without stops
without exits
just the long street of longing
and no map

3/roots

I sank into the hush of leaves and sky
where weeds grew like truth
between concrete cracks

a bird sang something honest
while i untied my thoughts
from screens and subway stations

rough bark pressed history into my palm
something older than apology
older than me

inside
a wild garden stirs
aching to bloom
aching to breathe
to root again

4/elevator quietness

the city roars in quietness
where lamplight leans on tired doors
a siren far away
a cat watching the world from a fire escape

I dwell beneath the weightless pause
of an apartment too big
for my thoughts

night paints windows in soft blue
like water waiting
to remember itself

alone is not lonely
it’s a room without mirrors
where i finally see

5/light on the pavement

After the storm
a calm that offers solace

Flowers bloom
at the edge of the crumbling lane
carrying the scent of hope

you said
healing is not a line
a loop
like breath returning

With bare feet beside me
courage stands steady
uninterrupted by the serenity