She was born between slammed doors and shattered vows,
a child no one fought for.
Her name was scribbled in ink
on court papers and custody exchanges --
not whispered in lullabies,
not sung to sleep.

Her mother vanished behind bitterness,
her father dissolved into silence.
No one stayed.
No one came back.

She became someone else’s responsibility,
folded into the quiet corners
of her grandparents’ rigid home.
They kept her clothed, kept her fed,
but love …
love was an echo she could never reach.

She learned to disappear without dying --
a ghost with warm skin,
drifting through classrooms, holidays,
birthdays no one remembered.

At sixteen, she confused need for love
and shackled herself to a boy
who only wanted to feel powerful.
She bled into motherhood
before she learned her own name.
Her youth slipped into cribs and quiet sobs.
No one asked if she was okay.

So she ran.
Into fire.
Into chaos.
Into strangers’ arms and bottles and moments
that pretended to care.
She sought warmth like a starving dog,
chasing sparks that burned her fingers clean off.

Every reflection was someone else --
someone she hated,
someone she blamed,
someone she pitied.

They called her damaged.
They called her lost.
No one asked why.
No one stayed long enough
to teach her how to stay for herself.

But --
One night,
years later,
with mascara dried like ink trails
and silence humming in her throat,
she stood in a bathroom mirror
and did not look away.

For the first time,
she didn’t flinch.
She didn’t lie.
She saw the girl --
abandoned, bruised,
bone-tired from surviving herself.
But still breathing.
Still here.

The world hadn’t wanted her.
But it hadn’t killed her either.
And buried beneath every rejection,
every bruise disguised as a lesson,
was a flicker --
small and trembling,
but hers.
The light she spent a lifetime chasing
was never in their hands.
It lived in her ribs,
waiting.
Burning low, but burning true.

She was the match.
She always was.
But no one taught her
how to strike.

© Dark Water Diaries

The soul is tender
It does not thrive on noise,
But on stillness that lets it breathe.
It does not ask for riches,
But for warmth,
For touch,
For the steady comfort of a hug
That says you are safe here.

The soul needs love
Not love dressed in conditions,
But love that listens,
That holds space,
That wraps us close when words are not enough.

It needs honesty
A place where truth is spoken
Without fear of rejection,
Where being real is enough.

It needs belonging
To walk this earth
Knowing we are not islands,
But threads woven
Into a greater tapestry.

It needs wonder
To look at stars
And feel small yet infinite,
To dance barefoot in the grass,
To remember that life is both fragile and miraculous.

And it needs growth
To stumble and rise again,
To be shaped by struggle,
To discover that even broken pieces
Can form something holy.

Most of all,
The soul needs to remember
It was never incomplete.
Every hug, every tear, every breath
All of it is proof:
The soul has always been whole.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.
They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
... Stephen King

She couldn't recall where she was on a night blessed by rain so pure that it caused the wilted flowers to
rise on their toes in excitement, and her to wither into depression. The night was a lightning-show of
blue-white flash from a thousand cloud cameras. And the gravel beneath her feet was simply the
degraded souls that she had slaughtered on nights before, torn from her spine like vertebrae and left to tot until they mirrored the hollow she carried inside.

::the rain could never wash away::
::the smell of her skin-cense::

And, today was no different. So, she drowned herself in black rose petals and broken glass, just so she
could suffer in beautiful elegance. The freckles on her shoulders were the pinprick memories she
insisted on forgetting, the forever-after tally-mark scars documenting how often she was horrid.

::millions::

of gold flecks in her eyes, because secretly, she's always been a bit of a gold-digger and it's just her
soul's way of showing her true colors; gold-diggers and mysterious blue marbles that quiver in the light
of the rising sun with her pupils dilating into ink-black agony. And the sound of her heart vibrating in
her ears with that horrible, hiccupping rhythm she had grown to hate causes her to shake in an anxious anticipation.

::and it means nothing::
::it couldn't possibly::

She lives in her memories, torn at the edges of the filmstrip clubs and ***** little secrets that she forces
between her lips. A kiss. She’s such a . . .

::faded thought::

Lost in translation. She’s (a) patient with her medication calling home in the middle of the night to say
she missed you. But, never as much as you missed her mind.

::and she's quite queer::

Dangling Star of Davids and Pentagrams from her collarbone
A set of rosary beads clenched in her pocket
Trying to cast out the demons
Trying to cast new actors for this endless play
A play she couldn’t stop rehearsing

::act(ing) natural::

Because it's much easier to smile
Than to explain those dreaded tears
Falling off her face (of the earth)

::she falls (fails)::

And withers once more, a tumbleweed who is far too fragile
who could resist
trying to break her
I never could.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

Something lives inside me
that is neither flesh nor soul.
It does not weep,
it waits,
feeding in silence,
gnawing the marrow
from within.

This is no sorrow,
sorrow has a voice.
This is the hush of a crypt,
the suffocation of earth
piled on a coffin
that still contains breath.

My smiles are glass shards,
arranged carefully
to mimic life,
but behind them
is a theater of ruin.
Each word I speak
is dragged bleeding
from a throat of rust.

Sleep brings no refuge,
only corridors of ash,
mirrors that fracture,
rooms without doors.
I wake not to light,
but to the weight
of another endless night
disguised as day.

The pain is rootless,
yet everywhere,
a shadow with no body,
a plague with no cure.
It is a name I cannot utter,
a hymn without sound,
a wound without blood.

I walk among the living,
but the grave has already
learned my shape.
And still,
I keep moving,
a funeral procession of one,
carrying the ghost
of who I was
to nowhere.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

Once, I built a sanctuary for you,
stone by stone,
with the mortar of trust and the glass of faith.
I lit candles in your name,
believing your presence was holy,
believing your words were pure.

But shadows crept through the arches,
their whispers wearing your voice.
The stained glass splintered,
colors bleeding into the dirt,
saints crumbling into faceless dust.
The altar cracked beneath the weight of falsehood,
and I was left kneeling in ruins,
hands empty, prayers unanswered.

False friends do not storm the gates;
they enter quietly,
draped in the robes of devotion.
Their smiles are soft as velvet,
their promises gilded like scripture,
yet beneath it all
they carry the silence of betrayal.

You were not my enemy.
You were worse,
the ghost in the choir,
the hollow echo in the hymn.
Your absence began long before you left,
your faithlessness written in secret ink
between the lines of every vow.

Now I wander the cathedral of memory,
its pews lined with ashes,
its windows nothing but jagged teeth of glass.
The incense of grief still lingers,
smoke that curls around my lungs,
a perfume of what was lost.

I mourn not only you,
but the version of myself who believed
the childlike trust,
the faith untested,
the hope that friendship was sacred.
All of it lies entombed here,
buried beneath stone and silence.

And yet
even in this hollowed ruin,
I light one candle.
Not for you,
never for you,
but for the lesson carved into bone:
that trust, once shattered,
does not resurrect.
That faith, once broken,
becomes a haunting.

The cathedral stands,
but it is no longer holy.
It is a mausoleum of what I gave,
what I lost,
and what can never return.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

She sat cross-legged on a deserted highway
all dressed in silence
her eyes spoke of how she used her paper weapons
to defend her glass heart

And I told her
the stars are (g)listening
because I didn't have the heart to say
"I think you're beautiful when you cry"

Dust collected on her eyes
like memories of old Polaroids
but she looked like a paperback
with dog-eared corners and a bent cover

In the hushed hours of the night
she looked flushed
and I'm not sure why
but she breathed out,
a tiny, nervous breath.

She told me how she missed
the boy who laughed in the sky..
she wished to be here again
shooting fireworks; dancing with sparklers
she wished to hear his laugh from then
she wished to feel her smile again

Then, she told me how she felt so small
I sympathized with her
as only empty highways and broken hearts do
and she dropped lit sparklers
to find her way back to civilization
and like her, the sparklers died

I lost her that night
but I know she's somewhere
halfway between the gutter and the sky
staring from vacant eyes
I wonder if the half-rotten forest
could ever breathe
as quietly as she did when she cried.

©️ Dark Water Diaries

I am a child of nature, a force undeniable
a warm April rain
that will never stop falling
an element of life

I can't stop wanting the wind beneath my feet
to set my soul free, and drift on clouds aimlessly

like a baby bird, abandoned, and never taught how to fly
by instinct needs its freedom to survive

it pounds through my veins
to follow what calls to me and never give up in trying

to be, all that is ME

and want to run, to escape from all that haunts and hurts me
to fly away

but

every time I jump from the cliffs of life and spread my wings
inevitably, the gravity of reality pulls me back down

you see

it's not the final fall that hurts the most
or the crashing into the ground

it's

that never-ending drop of eternal emptiness

that feeling
of constant descent
that lump
that forms in the back of your throat
blocking your breath

it's

the painful tightening and panic
piercing in your chest

it's

that fear of

F
E
E
L
I
N
G

of loving deeply and losing even deeper
of living without meaning
and longing for something more
of knowing life is short, but death is forever
and feeling as if you're caught somewhere in-between here and there

so, I stand still
too scared to move
not knowing any more what to do
because I've never been very good at living
without the promise of a heartbeat

and

it seems I've forgotten how to breathe on my own

but

I can't escape these memories that haunt me
and running away only brings me back to where I started
standing here, alone

::sighs::

it's all too familiar, these days that are passing me by
always coming then going
like the people, and the lost moments of my life

::sighs::

leaving me, without having the courage
to face the mirror of reality of why they left
and me standing there, alone
looking in a mirror with no reflection
if only I could learn to fly away.

©️ Dark Water Diaries