Notes From The Ruins

Unfinished is welcome.

Raw is encouraged.

Ash to ash,

Stone to stone,

What was borrowed

Comes back home.

River, keep them.

Wind, be kind.

Leave no gentle soul behind.

Fire, warm them.

Earth, embrace.

Hold them softly

In your grace.

We will meet

Beyond the snow.

When the mountain

Wildflowers perched like funeral flowers in my curls,

But I’ll see this road to the end.

I have spent years burying ghosts in unmarked ground,

Calling survival healing,

Calling silence peace.

Six names never spoken,

Six futures folded into drawers and cardboard boxes,

Six tiny constellations I pretended not to see.

The first was stolen with violence.

The rest I handed to time

Because grief was too heavy

And life would not stop moving.

So I carried them instead.

Across state lines.

Across birthdays and anniversaries.

Across hospital rooms and school pickups.

Across every version of myself that swore

She was fine.

Wildflowers perched like funeral flowers in my curls,

And I mistook the weight for the crown.

Now I stand at the edge of the field

With dirt beneath my nails

And letters in my trembling hands.

Not to say goodbye.

Only to say:

I remember.

I remember every dream that ended before it learned my name.

I stand in the ruin

Of your blackened cathedral

Smoke scars the bricks

Yet the silence is peaceful

The ceiling long since fallen

I wander its halls as the sky peers down

The beams and stone along the path

Forcing me to step around

Yet sunlight spills through shattered glass

In colors I had never seen

No roof remains to hide the heavens

No walls remain between

The saints are dust, the altar broken

The echoes finally stilled

But standing in the open ruin

Forever winding through these paths,

through forgotten cathedrals and rituals past,

where ivy climbs through fractured stone

and bells still ring though no one’s home.

A stranger walks beside my stride,

all dusk and shadow, bone and tide.

They never speak.

They never ask.

They wear the dark

just like a mask.

We wander where the saints once knelt,

through all the things I thought I’d felt,

through ruined prayers and weathered names,

through dying embers, borrowed flames.

The road unwinds.

The years unfold.

Their face stays hidden.

Mine grows old.

Yet when the moon spills silver weather,

our footsteps fall as one together.

And somewhere past the last unknown,

Tomorrow isn’t promised

Tomorrow isn’t a day

Tomorrow is a concept

To get you through the fray

And who are you

Now that tomorrow is a dream?

What is today

If the future isn’t clean?

If every map you carried

Burned before the road was known,

If every prayer for rescue

Echoed back as your own—

Then what remains?

Beneath the fear and noise?

When hope is not a destination,

But a choice.

Then let tomorrow keep its ghosts,

Its promises and debts unpaid.

I only have this breath, this hour—

I built a sanctuary from locked doors,

A melody of shadows on forgotten floors.

Brick by brick, I raised the sound,

Trying to keep the silence bound.

I stitched the cracks with quiet strings,

Hiding fear beneath their wings.

Colored light danced on the walls,

Echoing through empty halls.

And I sang to the dark,

Holding on to every spark.

Smiling through the lonely tone,

Standing in a house of stone.

The child inside would never sleep,

Guarding secrets buried deep.

One eye open by the fading flame,

Listening for footsteps that never came.

Outside, the seasons changed their tune,

Inside, I hummed the same old moon.

I called it safety,

I called it home.

But every note returned alone.

Years rolled by like passing rain,

Carrying echoes of my pain.

Then I heard the chains I wore,

Rattling softly at the door.

And I learned beneath the stone,

You can’t keep a heart alive alone.

The walls broke open with the dawn,

And all the hidden light came on.

Pouring through each shattered seam,

Gentle as hope, bright as dream.

There I found that frightened child,

Holding on all the while.

When the walls at last gave way,

A doorway opened into day.

She lifts her face and starts to see,

The altar cracked without warning.

Not with thunder,

not with revelation,

but with the slow violence of becoming.

A fault line split its center,

running through stone,

through memory,

through the name I once answered to.

On one side stood the person I had been— all sharp edges and survival,

all familiar wounds worn smooth by repetition.

On the other

waited something shapeless.

Not better.

Not worse.

Simply unknown.

The fracture widened.

And for the first time,

I stopped searching for a lesson

hidden inside the ruin.

The altar opened,

and the dust kept falling.

I stood at its edge,

unable to tell what had been lost,

or what might emerge from the break.

Only the crack remained,

stretching forward into darkness,

Every doorway opens into another ruined cathedral,

its ribs split beneath a bruised sky,

where moonlight blooms like an old wound

and silence drifts through the aisles.

Stained glass litters the stone like fallen saints,

each shard catching what little light remains.

The air tastes of incense and abandoned grace,

a hymn fading but never gone.

Ghosts move between the broken columns,

all of them wearing my face.

I keep expecting an exit,

some distant light beyond the night,

but every passage bends back

into the same sacred wreckage.

Another sanctuary of ash and echoes.

Another congregation of former selves

waiting beneath collapsing arches.

The starving one.

The angry one.

The one who mistook fire for warmth.

The one who called destruction freedom.

They rise when I enter.

Their hands reach from the shadows,

cold with memory.

Their borrowed mouths speak with my voice

and ask if I’ve come home.

I tell them no.

Still, I move forward,

through dust and broken hymns,

past monuments built from old mistakes,

toward the altar of ego and shame

standing at the heart of the ruin.

Around it, the cathedral collapses.

Stone falls.

Beams crack.

The walls surrender to time.

The altar remains.

Unmoved.

Unbroken.

Waiting.

Atonement is not escape.

It is learning to live among the wreckage

while every former version of myself

keeps calling from the dark.

The smoke still follows me.

The ghosts still wear my face.

And each time I cross the cathedral,

I find the altar exactly where I left it,

standing beneath a collapsing roof.

The past waits there,

patient as stone.

I sit among shattered saints,

listening to the echoes repeat my name

while the building caves in around us

You’ll never know how deep these thoughts run for you.

You’ll never see how much I bleed when I think of you.

You’ll never feel the way I feel when I see you.

I see you hiding.

I see you crying.

And seeing it breaks my heart.

That doesn’t mean hide it.

That doesn’t mean fight it.

It only means I want to see you true.

To see you shine.

To see you fly.

To see you rise.

Without the weight.

Without the shame.

Without your mind being cruel.

It only means

I want to see

what happens when

you