It does not arrive with a thunderclap
or the heralded trumpet of a fallen empire.
It is a quiet vibration in the marrow,
a sudden theft of oxygen
in the middle of a fluorescent aisle,
between the cereal boxes and the bleached tiles.

We thought we had paved over the gods,
mapped the wilderness into grids,
exiled the hoof-beat and the horn
to the dusty shelves of leather-bound myths.
But the wild did not vanish;
it simply migrated inward.

Now, it hides in the architecture of the synapse,
a surviving remnant of the deep wood,
the last vestige of a pantheon
that refused to be forgotten.

When the heart begins its frantic drumming,
it is not a glitch of the chemistry,
but the echo of a scream
thrown across a prehistoric valley.
It is Pan, stripped of his pipes and goatskin,
still haunting the thickets of the subconscious,
reminding the city-dweller
that they are still made of salt and fear.

We are modern, polished, digital,
yet we still tremble at the unseen,
carrying a wild, ancient forest
locked inside the ribcage,
waiting for the wind to shift
and the old god to shout.

“We are modern, polished, digital, yet we still tremble at the unseen, carrying a wild, ancient forest locked inside the ribcage.”