Beneath the willow,

you will find my name,

scratched in the bark

like a rising flame.

They told me “silence,”

they told me “obey,”

but I was not built to wither

that way.

They build their walls and they lock the door,

but words are rivers

they flood,

they pour.

They call me reckless,

they call me loud,

but truth was never meant

for the crowd.

A whisper grows and

becomes a storm,

a voic...

Your love was never store-bought,

never sealed in plastic,

never stitched in a factory seam.

It was rough-threaded,

calloused palms shaping warmth

the way clay remembers fingers.

Every word you gave me

was imperfect,

crooked as a hand-drawn line,

but it was ours:

ink smudged,

paper creased,

kept in a pocket

like something too fragile to lose.

I wear it still:

the uneven scarf of your care,

k...

Last night the stars came down,

not the gentle ones

I wished upon with Mama’s hand in mine

but heavy, angry stars,

with fire for wings

and thunder in their bellies.

They cracked the sky open,

spilled night across our street,

made the earth shake

like it was afraid too.

I wanted to point and say, look,

the stars are dancing,

but Mama pulled me close,

pressed my head against her chest

so I would...

It starts

behind my teeth

clawing, scratching,

pushing against the walls of my chest.

I want to let it out.

I want to fill the room with it

so loud

so raw

the air shatters

and someone finally hears

me.

But I don’t.

I swallow.

Again.

Again.

Smile. Nod.

“Fine,” I say,

and it curls,

tightens,

a living thing coiled in my ribs.

How long?

I can’t remember a day

without this undercurrent.

A scream wi...

The rift opened,

dragging me with it.

Not into fire.

Not into stars.

But into her silence.

That pause she left hanging

between one laugh,

and the next.

I fell through her eyes,

through half-lidded knowing

that asked for no language,

that answered before I even spoke.

It was a tearing,

a splitting of the world I’d kept safe,

and suddenly every secret,

every trembling shard of me

I had folded into...

A rabbit drifts past,

no, a ship,

no, maybe it’s me.

Arms stretching into the sky,

fingertips brushing at clouds

before they vanish into whispers.

A jagged mountain cracks open my chest,

and courage leaks out in rivulets

I cannot name,

but feel in my knees,

in the way my hair wants to dance

like flames in a windstorm.

A whale swims overhead, slow and deliberate,

and suddenly I am the ocean,

wave...

Paris burned beneath a storm-torn sky. Lightning split the heavens, and thunder rolled like cannon fire. Notre Dame bled fire and smoke from its wounded towers. The air reeked of ash, charred stone, and the coppery tang of human blood.

From his perch among the shattered statues, Quasimodo stared down at the nightmare below. Vampires swarmed the streets, moving in disciplined packs. Their claws to...

“Look at you, calling me spineless behind my back.”

Her voice cracked the silence like thunder. I had almost forgotten what it was to hear her, low, fierce, too beautiful for me to withstand. The attic smelled of wax and rosemary, a place that once held our laughter, our whispered spells, our bodies twined in secret.

Now the air itself recoiled.

I turned. Elira stood in the doorway, hair wild, ...

I outgrew my skin

like a child outgrows shoes.

Tight seams splitting

at the ankles of my soul.

Every heartbreak left its trace:

a stretch mark,

a tender ache,

a scar that stretched me wider.

I thought breaking meant ending.

But no.

It was only the sound of bones reshaping,

only the hush of old selves

slipping loose

so something steadier could take root.

Love.

Once a stranger I chased,

a flee...

They told her ambition was unbecoming,

a stigma stitched into her dress

by hands that never wore it.

The boardroom smiled politely,

men in cufflinks of wealth and inheritance

polished into arrogance.

Who spoke of merit the way priests

speak of miracles:

a mystery that always arrived

in their own sons’ hands.

She watched promotions float upward

like helium balloons,

the strings cut when she re...