For she had not accepted defeat,
nor surrendered to the wanderlust of it all,
trapped in the thick fog of her fear—
a labyrinth of shadows where her voice
dissolved into silence.

Metamorphosing, she carved a hollow,
a space to call home.
Fueled by chemicals measured in increments,
their sterile precision slicing through
the feral ache of her longing.
A hiding place she had conjured
as a child, weaving it from ashes and remorse,
where moths flitted to their amber deaths,
the bulb’s hiss a quiet menace,
its danger humming through the stillness.

Courage tasted metallic, sharp
on her tongue, mingling with the salt
of blood smeared on her fingertips.
Another night sprawled open—
her hair tumbling like restless waves,
her thoughts clutching at themselves,
an ouroboros of lamentation.

Sorrow, a seed lodged deep in her womb,
sprouted thorns that pierced her silence.
Shadows stretched their forgotten forms,
etched in the plot of her life—
a scratch, a swirl, a jagged dance
splattered across canvas,
each brushstroke a hymn to her unraveling.

The ghosts pressed in,
whispering their fractured violence.
No one listened. No one heard.
She knelt, crushed petals
beneath the weight of the world.
“Put the broken pieces back,”
she begged,
“reshape the sharp edges
of my disappointments.”

At the brink of dawn,
the angels sang to her—
their voices a river of grief and duende,
swelling, sweeping,
washing her raw and clean.

He was her anam cara,
the raindrops kissed on her raven's beak,
moonstones refracting fractured light.
He was the breath
that held time still,
slipping into her chest,
her heart a wistful drumbeat.