“Some nights the silence doesn’t comfort me; it conspires with the thoughts I cannot outrun.”

There are nights when my mind betrays me.
Whispering secrets I was never meant to carry.
They slip beneath the skin of silence,
sharp as glass, tender as longing,
and I lie awake, trembling with the weight.

They haunt the hollows where dreams should live,
soft voices brushing against my ribs,
telling stories of lives unlived,
roads I never walked,
loves I never dared to claim.

I crave them though they wound me.
These forbidden visions of what could have been.
They pull me into a world half-remembered,
where I am both stranger and home,
aching for a touch that never arrives.

I cradle them like uninvited lovers,
ash clinging to my fingertips,
their ruin pressed against my chest
until I mistake the burning
for something holy.

And still, I reach for them;
these ghosts that know my name,
hungry for the ache they leave behind,
as if the wound itself were proof
that I am capable of more than silence.

And when morning finally comes,
I rise with smoke still in my lungs,
wearing their confessions like a second skin,
as if by keeping their secrets, I might learn to survive my own.

“For in the dark, I confess to no one,
yet it is the night that holds me closest.”

 

“Perhaps the cruelest secrets are not the ones the world keeps from us, but the ones our own minds refuse to forget.”

 

~ Mia

 

---

About the Author:
Michelle Cuello (Mia) is a writer and artist exploring themes of healing, identity, and emotional depth. Her upcoming books, Ashes Before Dawn and The Air Never Breathed This Heavy, blend poetic storytelling with personal truth, offering reflections for those who ache, heal, and rise.