Inside us,
beneath the skin and the noise,
there's a child, eyes wide and open,
heart like fragile ink, waiting.

A child who needs no grand gesture,
no castles of promise or kingdoms of light,
just a sliver of softness, a single thread
to pull them into knowing
they belong.

They dwell in hidden pages,
the ones we often turn past too quickly,
marked by forgotten sighs,
footnotes of wonder, edged in longing.

They don't ask for much, really,
just a place in the margins,
a place in the prose where silence listens
and understanding holds them close.

Each of us,
a story unwinding,
scrawled on the chapters of bone and breath,
our pages turning, child, dreamer, seeker,
hoping someone will see
the ink stains beneath
and understand.

Oh, Halloween, night cloaked in wonder's veil,
Where shadows dance and phantoms sail.
A time when moonlight whispers in the trees,
And secrets stir on an autumn breeze.

The air grows crisp, a shiver deep,
Waking magic from its year-long sleep.
Leaves blaze in amber, red, and gold,
As stories of ages past unfold.

Children laugh with painted faces bright,
In costumes sewn by candlelight.
They roam through realms of make-believe,
Where mysteries linger and ghosts deceive.

Lanterns glow, carved with care,
Casting grins that leer and stare.
Pumpkins guard each path and door,
Their flickering flames the ancient lore.

Witches cackle in the dark,
A cat's eyes gleam with fiery spark.
Skeletons rattle, spirits rise,
Underneath October skies.

For on this night, all souls align,
The living and lost, the earthly, divine.
A hallowed hour where worlds embrace,
Flesh and phantom, face to face.

So come, be merry, join the spell,
In Halloween's sacred, shadowed swell.
For this one night, let fears take flight,
And revel in the haunting light.

It starts small,
a whisper, a flicker, a timid flame
in the middle of a vast, cold expanse.
You crave heat, but the fire takes its time,
growing only in the pauses, in the inches,
in the moments you almost gave up.

Progress is no storm
it's a soft drizzle on a thirsty earth,
seeping in quiet, unnoticed, until one day,
the roots push deeper, the stems grow taller.

You're tempted to curse the slowness,
the aching drag of it.
But to quit would be to stop the sun from rising,
to smother the flame with your own hand.

The world says "rush" while the earth whispers "wait."
And here you stand,
in the stillness, in the in-between,
learning the sacred art of slow.

Your heart is both warrior and sage,
carving a path where no path was,
each step a triumph, even when it feels like nothing.

You have already begun.
These small beginnings,
they are the birthplace of your mountains,
the cradle of your storms.

Do not despise the tender shoots that have yet to bloom,
for they will become forests if you let them.

Quitting would only steal the story
you were meant to tell,
a story written not in leaps,
but in a thousand quiet breaths of progress.

So hold fast.
This is your time,
your fire is growing.

Believe in the slow,
in the unseen,
in the yet-to-be.
You got this.

A smile sharper than glass,
glimmering with shards of light that cuts,
the kind that beckons you close, only to let you bleed
in the name of love.

Words like mirrors,
reflecting back nothing but distortion,
twisting your truth into knots,
until you question if you ever knew how to untangle
your own soul from their gaze.

They drink your kindness
like a thief,
quenching their thirst with the salt of your wounds,
leaving you hollow,
a vessel emptied of worth.

Their praise is a dagger dressed as a gift,
the hand that caresses your cheek
is the same that lets go,
watching you fall with a silent, satisfied smirk,
like a puppet whose strings were always theirs to hold.

Yet it's never their fault, is it?
A perfect storm of self-made delusion,
swirling in a vortex of "me, me, me."
You're collateral,
a casualty in the war they wage against anything
that threatens to expose the hollow beneath their skin.

Narcissistic behaviour,
a dance of shadow and flame,
leaves only the ashes of trust
for you to sweep away.

It starts like a whisper
threadbare promises,
soft hands hiding clenched fists
beneath the skin, bruises bloom quietly,
seeds of silence sowed in the dark corners of a home.

A smile fractured at the edge,
where love's architecture crumbles,
and the voice that was once free
is twisted into the shape of a question:
Am I not enough?

A door slams, not in anger
but in fear.
The echo swells in the bones,
stays in the walls,
turns a house into a prison
where every footstep is weighed with caution,
a rhythm of dread,
beating louder than the heart.

The world outside spins on,
but inside; there is no time,
no refuge, no escape.
Even sleep is just another war fought alone,
dreams choked by the shadow creeping
over pillowcases and quiet sighs.

And yet,
the grasp tightens with a smile.
It is tender, this violence,
a slow suffocation dressed as affection,
coated in apologies that evaporate
before they touch the air.
It doesn't arrive with storms,
but with lullabies that cut deeper
than screams ever could.

What is love in a house that forgets
the meaning of sanctuary?
Where the windows close
to keep the world out
and the mirrors crack
under the weight of too many lies told in silence?

It hides in plain sight,
in the slow erosion of spirit,
in the small sacrifices of self
until nothing remains but an echo,
a ghost tethered to the earth by fear,
too afraid to walk into the light
and too tired to fight the shadows
that cling like a second skin.

And the world wonders:
Why didn't they leave?
But it's not the leaving
it's the unraveling.
Each thread of identity,
each step towards the door,
pulls against a gravity that speaks
in the quiet voice of terror:
You'll never make it out.
You're already gone.

Still, in the deepest night,
there's a flicker, a spark,
a refusal to be fully extinguished.
The insidious grasp weakens,
as the heartbeat that remains
remembers its strength,
knows that hands meant to hold
do not leave scars.

And someday,
a door will open.
The house will breathe again,
and the quiet will become
a sanctuary once more.

Strip the room bare, piece by piece,
watch the air expand into spaces once filled,
a vase, a chair, the clock that hummed silently,
gone. Now the walls throb with absence.

We've been taught to mourn the missing,
but the empty frame sharpens the portrait,
its lines more fierce, its colours more certain.

What remains throbs, louder now,
the weight of each remaining thing grows.
A book, once ignored, beckons.
Chairs seem taller, proud in their vacancy.

Holding the shape of those who sat
but are no longer sitting. The chessboard's grid,
no longer a decoration, asks for fingers,
begs for strategy, begs to matter.

Loss pulls at us, but what if it also clarifies?
We are creatures who forget to notice,
until the ground shifts and we see
not the void, but the survivors.

The gaps sing with an intensity,
that can only exist in the space of subtraction.
The fewer the notes, the more the music hums,
in the tight, trembling air.

In the emptiness, what remains isn't just what is left
it is louder, sharper, significant in ways
we were too crowded to feel before.
In loss, we gain a new vision, where what stays
demands our gaze and commands a deeper gravity.

What we lose in breadth, we gain in depth.
The light that falls on what is left
glows with the weight of what has gone.