When the unknown reaches back

 I reached into the dark —  

not to conquer it,  

but to listen.  

The silence had weight,  

a breath that trembled  

like the pause before lightning  

decides to exist.  

Something ancient stirred there,  

beyond the veil of my fear,  

and I felt it —  

a pulse not my own,  

answering.  

Not cruel, not kind,  

but curious.  

It reached back.  

My skin became the question.  

My soul became the door.  

Every heartbeat echoed,  

*Who are you to call me forth?*  

And in that shivering stillness,  

I understood —  

the unknown is not empty.  

It is the mirror  

that only answers  

when you dare to touch it.  

Its fingers brushed mine —  

fire and ice in the same breath.  

And I was no longer just *me.*  

I was the echo,  

the reaching,  

the infinite loop  

of discovery and surrender.  

When the unknown reached back,  

it did not take me.  

It unveiled me.  

And the darkness whispered,  

with the voice of a thousand stars:  

*“Now you know —  

I was never the void.  

I was you,  

waiting to be found.”*

Ode to Nothing

 Nothing sits quietly in the corner,

wearing a crown of invisible velvet,

its pockets stuffed with air,

its shoes untied,

yet it trips no one.

I asked Nothing for advice once.

It shrugged,

which felt like an earthquake,

because emptiness has weight

if you stare at it long enough.

Nothing is the silence

between a laugh and a sigh,

the pause before you say

“I love you”—

and the echo when no one answers back.

But it’s also a clown,

spinning cream pies

made of clouds and static,

slipping on banana peels

that aren’t even there.

Nothing holds my hand at night,

whispering jokes in the dark

about how it once got mistaken

for everything.

And we laughed until

tears watered the absence.

So here’s to Nothing—

that hollow, that mirror,

that silly, tragic friend

who gives us all the space

to dance,

to cry,

to create,

to fall into the abyss

and land, somehow,

on joy.

The Weight

Each dawn arrives, but I do not rise—

a stone sits heavy on my chest,

pressing the air from my lungs,

leaving me hollow,

leaving me gasping.

The clock repeats its sermon,

tick after tick,

a cruel reminder

that yesterday never left—

it only dressed itself in today.

Anxiety coils around my ribs,

a serpent that never loosens,

whispering every wrong turn,

every “what if,”

until silence feels impossible.

Depression is the echo,

a looped recording in my skull:

stay down, stay tired, stay still.

It pulls me into its orbit,

a black star burning through my veins.

Morning should mean rebirth,

but for me it is replay.

I wake not to light,

but to weight—

and each breath feels like surrender.

The Butterfly’s Ascension

Once, I was bound to earth,

a prisoner wrapped in silence,

my body a coffin of stillness,

my breath trembling against the walls of change.

The world mocked my frailty,

called me nothing but a crawling shadow,

a husk without destiny.

But deep inside, a fire stirred—

the whisper of wings unborn,

a storm pressed tight in fragile skin,

a promise written in the marrow of my being.

I dissolved in darkness,

surrendered my shape to oblivion,

each cell a battlefield of death and rebirth.

It was agony—

to burn without flame,

to die without grave,

to become without knowing what I would be.

Then came the rupture—

my tomb cracked open,

and light poured in like thunder.

I rose, trembling,

my body sculpted by suffering,

my wings dripping with the colors of storms and sunsets.

I took flight.

Every beat of my wings

was a defiance,

a hymn against despair,

a cry that what breaks me

also exalts me.

I am not the crawling thing they remember.

I am not the husk left behind.

I am sky-born fire,

a fleeting miracle,

fragile yet immortal in my dance.

I carry eternity in my wings,

though time will wither me.

For a moment, I am glory incarnate—

a whisper of divinity passing through mortal eyes.

And when I fall,

the earth will not mourn—

but the air will remember

the thunder of my fragile flight.

Out of the mud

The mud pulls me under,

thick silence clinging to my skin,

a weight of sorrow pressing down,

whispers of doubt

curling around my lungs.

I sink,

but not forever.

With trembling arms

I heave against the sludge,

my muscles tearing,

then knitting themselves stronger.

Each fall teaches me

a new way to rise.

Every descent sharpens

the angles of my vision,

bending despair

into shapes of wisdom.

The darkness

gives me strange sight:

to see fractures in the world

where light can pour through,

to hear songs

hidden beneath the noise.

Creativity blooms

in the cracks of my struggle.

Perspective ripens

in the soil of my pain.

Innovation hums

like blood in my veins.

Empathy grows

where scars once lived.

I learn,

again and again,

to wrestle with gravity

and come up breathing.

And when the mud

clutches at me longer,

I rise to remember:

what doesn’t kill you

makes you stronger.