Through the Fog

Tag: Darkness

  • Monsters

    There were monsters under the bed

    when I was small —

    shadows that crept when the lights went out,

    teeth made of night,

    hands made of nothing but fear.

    Mama said they weren’t real,

    just tricks of the dark.

    But she never looked close enough

    to see the ones growing inside me.

    The monsters learned my name.

    They whispered it softly

    when I tried to sleep,

    sang lullabies of shame

    and promises of pain.

    As I grew older,

    they stopped hiding under the bed.

    They moved in —

    set up home behind my eyes,

    curled around my thoughts,

    and told me I was theirs.

    Now I make the bed every morning,

    neat corners, clean sheets,

    pretending the space beneath is empty.

    But some nights,

    I still hear breathing —

    not from the floor,

    but from within.

    And I realize

    the scariest thing about growing up

    is learning the monsters never leave.

    They just change address.

    From under the bed

    to inside your head.

  • The Shape of Silence

    It’s the echo of every truth you never dared to speak, 

    a weight that settles in the hollow of your chest

    like something carved from grief

    and sharpened by silence.

    It crawls along the inside of your skull,

    slow and deliberate,

    leaving claw marks in places

    you swore nothing could reach.

    It fills the rooms of your mind

    with a stillness so absolute

    it feels like a warning.

    Breathing becomes a memory,

    a thing you used to know how to do

    before this presence learned your shape

    and wrapped itself around you

    with the cold precision

    of something that doesn’t need to rush.

    This isn’t a blanket—

    it’s a shroud.

    It doesn’t warm;

    it constricts.

    It tightens until your pulse forgets its rhythm

    and your ribs forget their purpose.

    It settles deeper than fear could ever go,

    into the marrow,

    into the places no light has touched in years.

    You can’t see it—

    that’s the cruel part.

    It hides just beneath the threshold of vision,

    drowning you in a darkness

    that feels personal,

    intentional,

    intimate.

    And somehow,

    it knows you’ll let it stay.

  • The World Wouldn’t Stop Turning

    I didn’t move,

    but the world wouldn’t stop turning.

    Time kept its pace

    while I stood still inside myself,

    watching everything pass

    like I wasn’t part of it anymore.

    The sky seemed blue

    or maybe that was just my emotion

    projecting something softer

    onto a day that didn’t earn it.

    Funny how feelings can repaint reality

    and call it truth.

    I tried so hard to be cool about it,

    to play it off like nothing touched me,

    nursing a half-empty bottle

    or is it half full?

    I could never decide

    if I was losing something

    or still clinging to it.

    I drank for the pause,

    for the quiet between thoughts,

    for the moment where I didn’t have to name

    what was breaking underneath my calm.

    The world kept spinning.

    The sky kept pretending.

    And I sat there measuring my life

    in sips and seconds,

    wondering when stillness

    started feeling heavier

    than motion ever did.

  • Disassociate

    I leave my body without moving.

    Eyes open, but I am elsewhere.

    The room blurs, voices stretch thin,

    and I hover just above myself

    like smoke that forgot its fire.

    Disassociation feels like safety,

    but it is also loss.

    A way of surviving the unbearable

    by not being there at all.

    Time folds in strange ways.

    Minutes dissolve,

    hours vanish,

    days pass like a dream

    I can’t quite remember

    but can’t wake from either.

    I watch my hands move,

    hear my mouth speak,

    but none of it belongs to me.

    I am vaguely familiar to myself,

    a stranger inhabiting my skin.

    And yet,

    this distance once saved me.

    It kept me alive when being present

    was too dangerous, too sharp, too much.

    But now, healing asks me to stay.

    To return,

    to feel,

    to sit inside my own body

    without slipping through its seams.

    Disassociation taught me survival.

    Presence will have to teach me living.

  • What Waits in the Quiet

    Photo Credit: Martin Adams

    It’s the presence that waits for you in the silence,

    the thing that doesn’t need eyes

    to watch you.

    It slips in when the room goes quiet,

    when the air grows still,

    when you finally think you’re alone.

    It’s patient—almost gentle—

    as it curls around the edges of your thoughts

    like frost spreading across a windowpane.

    You don’t see it.

    You feel it.

    A slow awareness that something is there,

    too close,

    too familiar.

    It rearranges your memories

    just slightly—

    enough to make you question

    what happened

    and what you think happened.

    It blurs the line between the two

    until you can’t trust the ground you’re standing on.

    It whispers in a voice

    that sounds almost like yours,

    but not quite—

    like someone learned your tone

    by listening through the walls.

    It knows the places your mind goes

    when you’re tired.

    It knows the thoughts you’re afraid to admit to yourself.

    It knows the cracks in your armor,

    the ones you swear aren’t visible.

    And it sits there,

    in the dim corners of your mind,

    waiting for the moment

    you confuse its breath for your own.

    Because that’s how it gets you—

    not with fear,

    not with violence,

    but with familiarity.

    It doesn’t need to break down the door.

    It only needs you to open it

    thinking you’re letting yourself in.