The Girl Who Dreamed Beside Bone

This poem is about reverence for the mysterious, and the sacredness of slowness in a world that demands noise and certainty.

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She did not speak often,

not because she lacked words,

but because her slumber was a sanctuary stitched from whispers and forgotten lullabies,

and the world outside her silence always asked too much, too fast, too loud.

They called her strange,

this girl who curled like a prayer beside a bleached skull crowned with ancient ache,

its teeth like frozen confessions,

its hollow gaze a gate to somewhere old and trembling with memory.

She wasn't afraid—

only stilled by an overwhelmed reverence in the presence of something that had outlived storms,

famine, fire, and the names of those who once held it in fear or devotion.

To her, it was not death,

but a mirage of what comes when longing has nowhere else to go,

a lull in the pulse of time where even sorrow learns to be soft.

She dreamed with it the way others dream of oceans,

of flying, of love—they shared a quiet pact,

the girl and the horned sentinel of once-was,

as if each night she curled close enough,

she might one day understand what it means to stay,

and what it means to be gone,

and why the heart wants both.