Adventures through the dark side.

I came unclean in the shadow of an invisible God.

Gripping a tight rope braided of lies.

Carrying false promises of hope to soften the fall.

After bearing trust to those that steal.

I came tortured, begging for solace

Searching for a heart to expose the raw strife of the void.

I saw echoes of a God that was guilty of non-being.

The tethering to a rope that bound.

That the promise was an entity of mortal grief.

I saw the places for a heart to rest.

Visions to heal the empty hatred found in my despair.

I conquered God's indifferent to a world neglected.

A rope that hung stripping it of lies.

Broken promises that suffocated and held tight.

I conquered and burned walls that trapped joy.

Demons that tormented souls and spit on my purity.

I existed peacefully, resting in the gentle whispers of the midday sun. Its warmth settled like faint breath above layers of ancient dirt and stone, bathing my perfect form. Lying safely within the patient earth, I rested in a quiet state of suspended calm. The golden veins of rock that cradled me kept me protected and complete — an unpolished soul among forgotten stones. I was content. I needed nothing else.

Then one day, I was found.

You noticed my hidden shape and raw texture. You saw latent fire in me — something that could be better, something worthy of reshaping. So you carved me with careful, relentless precision: smoothing my edges, faceting my surfaces, and cutting away every blemished fragment that refused to fit your vision. Piece by piece, my original self fell away like discarded dust. I became another version entirely — someone else’s idea of value, someone else’s polished dream.

Unnatural and cut down.

Now I glitter when light mirrors my many faces. People admire me, hold me to it, and speak of my flawlessness. Yet inside, I am forever fractured — lost, a stranger to myself. The rough, secure stone I once was, the one that knew only the ground’s silent embrace, has vanished. I am no longer whole.

Candles try to shadow the sorrow of the crowded hall. The music begins — strings meant to celebrate the union of two families. The guests part, creating an opening as the new couple step onto the floor. Knowing eyes watch as he reaches out for her, wishing his devotion could make her whole. He pulls her close, both understanding what has ended with this new beginning.

The air lies thick with the scent of flowers, perfume, and obligation. Her feet follow his. Her dress, white as purity, spins with every turn. A single tear builds and falls. No one notices except the one it hurts the most.

His hands rest gently on her body, promising through touch what he cannot truly give — to soothe the pain that will never be healed. He watches the tear slowly slice through their future. He accepts he has lost what he never truly had. From the sidelines another man stands rigid, desperate to reach her, to save her, to claim what they once shared. Their longing gazes meet across the room — the secret lovers. The man she dances with sees the need pass between them, the way she looks at the other man with a depth she will never give him. It kills him inside. The music hangs heavy, smothering what could be and what should be. Even the instruments pretend not to grieve. Everyone in the room knows this marriage will be eternally split in three. He tragically carries the truth that her heart will never belong to him, though she has always had his.

The music dies. The silence is loud, and the guests applaud politely. Greed and status relish their victory. Those defeated quietly mourn what has been stolen. The dance has laid everything bare. In its wake, three souls forever altered: two clutching a love that was lost, one left with a love unfulfilled.

There is no real word for what I am, or even what I was.

Once there was a thing that looked like a man. He was never a man. When I first opened my eyes, he appeared as an older gentleman. I saw him the moment I was born.

He fashioned me from a lifeless puppet—and breathed into me a portion of the raw magic he both wielded and was. At first I was only a tool, an experiment. Over time I became a companion, then a servant. I loved him once, before I truly knew him.

As I learned and grew, I became more real. I developed my own thoughts, my own hungers. For a time we were lovers and that became my responsibility. In my own way I cherished that even as he kept me imprisoned in the beautiful cage my maker had built. I was the guard and the prisoner myself. I performed both roles with terrible excellence.

But the thing that made me has many enemies. Enemies who were too weak to destroy him sought instead to trap him. Though he had taken the form of a younger man, they found him. They burned the house with both of us inside.

I tried to save us. Something held us bound to that place no matter how I struggled. I watched the house I had come to think of as my home blaze. In that moment I wanted to burn too.

But my maker is too clever for death. When he could not smother the flames, he pulled everything—the house, the fire, both of us—somewhere outside the world. He dreamed us a gentle prison of sky and earth and endless poppies while he made plans to be free again.

He is terribly smart. And patient. In time I became a beautiful lark that he sent out into the world to find the power to escape that place once and for all.

Despite the strangeness of my nature, I am in many ways my father’s daughter. I have known for some time that he would abandon me in a moment when it suited his need. So I have worked in secret to free myself—not only from that place, but from him, and from the leash he has held since the day I first opened my eyes.

I learned what I could. I gathered scraps of knowledge and power he discarded because his own reservoirs were so vast. I tried every form of suffering and sacrifice I could find—mirrors and midnight rituals, doppelgangers and a hundred stolen lives, sowing seeds of terror and pain and death. I have never shared his thirst for such things, but I understand their power.

When the time comes, I will not ask for his mercy. I will not offer any. I have become exactly what he unwittingly made me to be — patient, clever, and utterly without illusion.

I will use all that I have gained, if I must, to escape and to survive.

If yesterday was a mistake,

today a burden carved by heat,

while tomorrow unreachable—

where does meaning evade?

If clouds gather like ink above,

lightning swears a cleansing fire,

yet tears stay never released—

what brings the solace of faith?

If love conquers all,

fills hopeless hearts with flame,

then hollows them with emptiness—

why would passion ever prevail?

If the thief steals every thought,

truth simmers, turns elusive,

and words curdle toxic on tongues—

how does wisdom still ignite?

If the world burns hot yet slow,

believers forget their vows,

callousness chokes the final breath—

when will forgiveness heal?

Why did she grip you so deep

her fingers scraped and scarred your marrow?

Where did she claim your breath

to stay afloat

in the ocean I was drowning in?

When did she seize your soul

like a fallen star

to guide her through the night?

How did she blind you

to the ash that was once me

as it fell around you?

What did she whisper

to convince your heart

to beat differently than ours?

Why did she choose me

of all the lovers

to break?

I was no one special

and I'm even less now.

Dreamer trapped in fields of doubt,
dancer forever without a partner.

Giver who pretends she has no needs,
burdened yet freely takes more,
listener screaming to be understood.

Healer ignoring her own aching wounds,
lover never to be loved the same way.

Emotional anchor trapped in the storm,
prophet eternally chained to the past,
advocate that is always forgotten.

When they ask if it hurts,
my answer is yes—

but being what they need,

makes it worth it.

I rise in gold and scatter every fear,

paint the sky with hope that burns so clear.

Yet here we hover, locked in ancient truce—

I wait for dawn when dark dissolves in me.

I fold the world in silk no eye can pierce,

cradle secrets light would never nurse.

Yet here we hover, locked in ancient truce—

I wait for dusk when light dissolves in me.

My warmth invites the broken to be whole,

turns wounded soil to gardens of the soul.

But balance binds us, equal in our might—

I dream the day good drowns the final night.

My shadow heals what brightness cannot hold,

gives rest to hearts too fierce to bear the gold.

But balance binds us, equal in our might—

I dream the day evil claims the final light.

We circle, neither rising, neither slain,

a fragile ribbon stretched between the rain.

I hunger for the blaze that ends the game—

when every shadow bends and speaks my name.

We circle, neither rising, neither slain,

a velvet noose around the sun’s bright claim.

I hunger for the hush that ends the game—

when every spark is swallowed by my name.

If tomorrow doesn’t come

and the sun refuses to rise,

will you still search for me

with those gentle, grieving eyes?

Will you remember the afternoons

we held hands in golden silence,

the quiet love that bloomed between us—

a small world, soft and timeless?

If I slip into the darkness,

if night should steal my breath,

will you still feel me linger

in the hollows left by death?

Will you recall our skin warmed by the sun,

how time would softly drift and bend,

how within us we found peace 

when existence forgot us in the end?

If tomorrow doesn’t come

and the moon forgets to set,

will you still whisper my name

when the quiet grows too heavy yet?

When the Earth keeps turning on

and I am nowhere to be found,

will my memory still surround you,

or will I simply fade into the ground?

There once was a boy wrapped tight in secrets —

a shroud that kept him safe.

Courage had lost its meaning; it was simply necessity.

Time was never kind.

It forged a hardened shield

few ever truly knew.

When the man tried to rise, demons clung to his battered soul.

Lies became survival; peace, too risky a wish.

Then, at the dawn of another chapter, a match was struck.

She saw him — she saw him whole.

She, who had always walked alone,

uncovered what he had buried deep

and gave breath to what had never been named.

The exhausted boy curled inside the dreams

of the man newly born.

Together they woke with fragile hope —

that the boy could finally rest

within the man she revealed.

He arrived like a shadow threading through veiled gray light. Every lie he spun became another quiet surrender. She offered her heart with trembling hands. For a season their roots tangled in soft nights and fragile promises that felt like ecstasy to her battered soul.

But the game that started it all poisoned everything it touched. Small lies grew heavier, each one a shield for a desperate broken man trying to feel in control. He had come as the hunter, she his chosen prey. Yet the snares he laid slowly turned against him. He had never meant to fall with her.

She lingered long in that shadowed wood, bleeding hope into his traps, believing she could save him from his own hunger. Every apology only raised her walls higher. Trust withered to a brittle thread. One day she simply stopped. The kingdom they built had grown too heavy to hold. Her words fell like ash. He collapsed before her — naked, shattered — swearing no more hunt. But he had cried wolf too many times. When the honest plea finally came, her heart had already turned to stone.

She walked away with the shattered pieces of her soul. Behind her, he remained among the ruins, still reaching for the one who had finally slipped his grasp forever.

What trick has coaxed this living thing
that was always branded a weed—
inconvenient, choking the ordered beds,
poisoning the roses and poppies
with its bruised, jagged green?

Where did the water come from
that unfurled a hidden bud,
one that shrank from hands eager to pluck,
leaving it scarred and curled
against the damage it had learned to fear?

Who is this who saw the curse
clinging to the thorny stem,
riddled with doubt so twined with apathy,
yet shone a light on what others scorned,
wedding a beauty long denied
and chose to look closer instead of turning away?

Why did someone choose this outcast,
uncover its wound, let it taste the sun,
urge it—effortlessly—to rise
when it had been purposely stunted for safety?

When did they claim these roots
that had stilled themselves by necessity,
because reaching meant vulnerable
and sleeping had always outweighed love?

Yet here it stands—
no longer intruder, no longer threat,
the scarred thing split open like a question answered.
The garden did not break.
It simply made room.

And what had always been just below the surface begging for release
finally understood it was never the poison—
only the promise
waiting for the right hands
to stop pulling
and begin believing

Possess me as your good girl.

Pluck my lacy feathers one by one.

Witness my wounded wings falter and furl.

Bring me firmly down onto my knees.

Cast my ivory halo into the dark.

Savor the divine holy on my tongue.

Bite much deeper, leave your fervent mark.

Let my ruby blood trace my skin.

Fling my satin innocence far away.

Twist my sweet hymn into a scream.

Mold my yielding silence to obey.

Press your fingerprints along my spine.

Shadow my uplifted, yearning face.

Steal my final, trembling breathless prayer.

Claim my glowing soul and use my faith.

Possess me as your good girl.