The empty equation

I keep a clean altar beneath a weathered name,

Yet no second shadow enters its flame.

The scales know my weight, but misread my worth,

And send every compass away from my earth.

I have fed the crows with the last of my bread,

Still winter arranges a room for the dead.

Good seeds sleep beneath my tongue’s quiet rain,

While wild vines inherit the neighboring plain.

I polish the door that no footsteps seek,

And teach empty chairs how the lonely speak.

Somewhere, a key is rusting in an unseen hand,

Somewhere, a heart forgets the shape I command.

What ledger of stars keeps erasing my claim?

What wheel turns backward and calls it by name?

The dusk grows heavier, thread by thread,

A disheartened moon with its silver bled.

I ask the dark, though it answers in stone:

Why does the road keep returning me home?

If karma is water, why thirst at the well—

And who hid my companion inside this spell?