Books are not distractions. Rather, they are, and have been, the most profound and accurate mirrors man has ever crafted.

— RJ Arkhipov

Divided - No tides of time or distance will wash away your step. It does not fleet as they do, those gladiators and their mighty spears or the beasts that howl into the dark for release. Our story carves deeper, pitilessly, infinitely. A wound that bleeds the ink that stained your palm and the tears of an impossible tomorrow.

— RJ Arkhipov

For a long moment we didn't move. We just stared at each other. So much time had passed since our eyes last met. So much had changed. I turned away and pressed my head to the cold window pane. I traced my initials onto the misted glass and, as they began to fade, He reached out his fingers and retraced my signature. Furthermore, I watched it fade once more and felt his moist fingers brush against my lips. He let them linger there a moment, then replaced them with his own lips. Then I woke up.

— RJ Arkhipov

In the City of Light, the stars are blind. Our constellations do not reside in the skies.

— RJ Arkhipov

The calm skies that drifted above us lulled us into thinking this traverse would be smooth, but after several hours, the unsteady sea had taken its toll on me and after a light lunch and a brief swim in the open sea failed to do so, I attempted to remedy my MAL de MER with rest. When I awoke, the sun had already set and the cool air and soft light of twilight helped recalibrate my disoriented thoughts. Although my seasickness had subsided, I lay starboard side facing the heavens - that were now a deep shade of purple - to not provoke another episode. We set to anchoring behind several large volcanic pillars just a stone’s-throw away from where the Tyrrhenian Sea kissed the east of the island. A handful of wishes scattered the skies as we approached the shores of ACI Arezzo. As these stars traced their dying song across the void above, part of me felt ashamed for even entertaining the notion of wishing upon a star, but that voice was speedily silenced by words He had once shared with me in Scotland: “There is always some truth to fiction.

— RJ Arkhipov

The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name? In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings. To drown in the offing. Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.

— RJ Arkhipov

There is no shame in darkness.

— RJ Arkhipov

What Will Linger/Hollow of Him - They crept so quietly back. Mere hints of words, at first, then whispers in the loud echoing a winter past. In this place, hollow of Him, his poetry resounded. I could almost taste the fragments of the worlds he had discovered. I remember the ache in his words; you could see each syllable smolder in his gaze.

— RJ Arkhipov