**🎩 The Ringmaster’s Chant
(Spoken, low and hypnotic)**
“Ladies… gentlemen… wanderers in the dusk…
Lean closer now.
Don’t worry—
the shadows lean closer too.
In this tent of trembling light,
names slip,
faces shift,
and truths grow thin as moth-wings.
Repeat after me—
silently,
inside your obedient little minds:
Look not too long…
Look not too deep…
The circus wakes what should not wake from sleep…
For here, under the pearl and black,
the mirrors do not show you—
they show
what you fear you are becoming.
Listen…
Do you hear the canvas breathing?
Do you feel the ground remembering your steps?
Good.
It means the circus has seen you.
Now hush.
The show begins when the tent blinks.
And if it keeps its eyes open…
you may yet walk out
the same shape
as you walked in.”
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 