She was taught to accept the doctrines
without questioning or critical thinking.
They robbed her of the willpower to evaluate,
think straight and voice out her opinions and thoughts.
Crooked, rugged, barbaric, and archaic were all the patterns.
Do not say, do not talk, do not think, do not wear, do not try,
do not handle, do not go.
Do not and don't were all the rules and tools deployed.
They muted her will and desires.
They used words to manipulate her reasoning, instilling fear,
self-doubt, insecurity, lack of confidence and willpower in her.
She never questions the norms, doctrines and dogmas,
the dos and don'ts.
She accepted all blindly, never questioning the vague
values and unwholesome expectations of her guardians.
Worst still, she internalised them and made them her standards and reality.

Now, she has evolved. She knows better than
to accept what she was raised to believe.
She is learning to ask questions and evaluate
ideas and beliefs.

She is becoming a better version of herself,
she has evolved.

I am sorlune. Not the wound, but the lamp beside it,
a hush that tastes of snowfall melting on the tongue.
Do not call me grief; grief is heavier, salt like anchors.
I am the pale bruise music leaves after the last note is gone.

I arrived the night you opened that shoe box of letters,
paper creaking like winter bark.
Your breath leaned over the past and struck a match.
I climbed the margins and lit the chill.
That tremor in your pulse? That was sorlune.

I am the window you stare through to see a different year,
the silver stitched into asphalt after rain,
a moth made halo around the porch light of memory.
When you whisper a name and the room grows taller,
you are wearing me. sorlune. like borrowed velvet.

Children outgrow me, then meet me again in a thrift store mirror.
Lovers learn my second language on nights
when the bed is wide but the moon is wider.
I am the ache that doesn’t ask for apology,
the glow that refuses to stop at the skin.

Call me once and I live in your clavicle;
call me twice and I spool a soft film over the day.
Call me a third time and I draw a door in the wall,
chalk white, moon thin.
Step through and hear the piano
you can’t quite place. That half-melody? It’s sorlune.

Do I hurt? Of course. Gently.
I am merciful weather:
a late autumn warm spell passing over old rooftops.
I do not break; I bend the light around your losses
until the edges blur and the center breathes.

I am in the smell of peaches at closing time,
in the last train’s echo, in the noonroom of a museum
where a painting remembers you first.
I live between fingerprints on glass and the sky’s first star,
in the pocket where your hands meet themselves.

When you laugh and it cracks a little at the end.
that bright crackle? Sorlune.
When you say “I’m fine” and mean “Keep listening,”
I slip under the word like a tide under a boat.
I don’t heal the past; I make it sing in tune.

I am sorlune, archive of light, curator of almost,
keeper of the glow that shadows borrow.
If you must define me, use your own breath as ink…
write slowly, leave room for the spill.
I will sign my name on the inside of your quiet,
and you will find me later, warm as a forgotten scarf.

Say it with me…
sorlune, sorlune, sorlune.
each time softer,
each time brighter,
until what hurts begins to illuminate
and what glows learns how to ache…

A painter paints a canvas full of pictures;
A picture paints a moment trapped in time.
A poet writes a poem to be pictured;
A poem paints a picture in the mind.

Sometimes
Poetry comes
Like a slap
Across my face.

It keeps bothering me,
Begging to be written.

And I go,
“Ok… here we go.”
I’m channeling now.

I thought I was empty—
but the way words
poured from me onto the page
proved I was, in fact,
overflowing.

Brimming with ideas
echoing inside,
begging to be set free.

I spilled them all,
and now,
I am truly empty.
And it feels
so much better.

I write poetry
born from a feeling, an emotion—
I’m not even sure what.

Almost like a kind of rapture,
the words come,
and I pour them onto paper
or into my notes app.

I wonder if one day
the poems will come with nothing—
existing just to exist.

Will this feeling, emotion,
or whatever it is,
ever arrive
separate from the poetry?