Heavy night.
But he goes.
Speaks

Old warmth on his skin.
Water.
Forgetting.
Bone-pain memory.
A last thin light.

He is only one.
One single.
A flicker.

He walks out.
Sees.
Says.

Small on the stage,
smaller still beneath the lights —
yet vast,
magnified into myth,
multiplied across screens.
A trembling god
with a tired heartbeat.

He sits
where he once stood.
The piano holds him upright.
Words come like fossil flame.

A thousand nights behind him.
Ten thousand faces before him.

"It's not dark yet,"
he murmurs,
"but it's getting there."

He stands.
Nods.
Balances against the air.

Back door.
Quiet.
A cognac.
A plate of something warm.

No one asks.
No one intrudes.
No one pretends eternity.

Just a small old man
with the scent of departing time,
carried through corridors
toward sleep.

Later, he dreams
as only the almost-gone dream —
weightless,
wingless,
wordless.

Only one.
Only still.

A spark in the long night.
A voice dissolving into silence.

And yet —
still saying.
Still saying.