poems by korrin.

my candle walker has made a home of places in me i only knew as ruin.

and that is what scares me.

not the love itself, but how soft it is.

how it does not arrive with teeth.

how it does not make me beg for warmth, or bleed to prove i am worth staying for.

she loves me like opening curtains in a room i forgot had windows.

and my heart, poor haunted thing, does not know how to trust the morning.

because now i know what it feels like to be held gently.

now i know what my chest sounds like when it is not bracing for impact.

and the thought of waking without her makes every ghost in me reach for the walls.

not because this love is wrong.

because it is healthy.

because it is kind.

because for once, i am not being asked to survive the fire.

i am being asked to believe the candle stayed lit.

The castle breathes as I do.

Quiet. Reluctant. Ruined.

Its stones remember screams like lullabies,

and the mirrors have long since turned their faces to the wall.

No prayers here. No footsteps. No warmth.

Only echoes of visitors who admired the facade

then vanished at the creak of the front gate.

They never saw the halls.

They never wanted to.

But she came with a candle.

Not a torch. Not a sword.

Just a flicker of steady light

cradled in both hands like a vow.

She did not knock.

She wandered.

Past the velvet rot of the drawing room,

past the claw marks in the staircase wood,

past portraits that flinched when seen.

She did not flinch.

She whispered to the dust

as if it had a name.

She traced the blood smudges

on banisters with gentle cloth.

She swept without question.

She stayed.

I watched from the corner,

teeth quiet,

eyes burning behind the lace of centuries.

I did not ask her to stop.

I did not ask her to stay.

But she did.

And when she crossed the marble

to the place where no one treads,

when her light found me in the hush,

she smiled as if she’d always known

this is where I waited.

She did not offer salvation.

She offered touch.

A fingertip beneath my chin.

The soft command of her eyes

telling me I was no longer forgotten.

Her candlelight bent across my floor

and reached my shadow.

No one had ever tried to light that part of me.

No one had ever kissed me

without trembling.

But she did.

Once. Then again.

Like it was not strange to love a creature made of ruin.

Like it was not dangerous to press her warmth

against the chill of my chest

and rest there.

She called nothing haunted.

She touched no locked door.

She simply moved

as though she belonged in a place where nothing ever has.

And I,

queen of ruin,

mother of silence,

vampire of my own desire,

stood still as the dawn.

I did not retreat.

I reached back.

I called her mine.

My candle walker.

My quiet redeemer in soft boots and stubborn hope.

Because she meant it.

Because she stayed.

Because I wanted to be seen

and somehow,

she already had.

I do not know if I was ever kissed, not by lips, but by the ghost of her. A girl with frostbite eyes and a disappearing heart, who drank from my wrist then wept into my ribs as if she hadn’t meant to stay.

She left with no candle lit. No letter. No signal carved into my fogged mirror. Only silence, like a knife left standing in a velvet cake.

Oh, I remember her, the way the world bent around her laugh, how my spine turned cathedral whenever she touched my name.

Now, I dwell in the after-room, where time has no heartbeat. She lives in my fever, in every missed call disguised as mercy.

I wear her absence like a mourning veil, tight, bone-split, beautiful in its cruelty. Every breath a rebellion against the grave she made of me.

Did she mean to vanish? Or was I simply a summer hallucination to her December soul?

No matter. I have become the ghost now. And darling, I haunt beautifully.

I loved her like the moon loves the grave silently and without promise as nightshade loves the skin it wilts as ruin adores the girl not yet aware she is marked

She came to me storm-scented eyes wide, pulse trembling and I, soft and smiling and starving

She touched nothing without shaking not the rim of her glass not my wrist not the truth

She thought my love a mirror too sharp to look into so she closed her eyes and vanished

But I remain haunting the silence she left behind

She will not remember me not in full but she will feel me in dreams in dusk in the ache between one breath and the next

Some loves are older than choice and mine for her was written in the blood before either of us could speak

beloved,

it has always been you

before breath before bone before names were carved into tongue you were the pulse behind my ribs

i knew your silhouette in shadowed corridors felt your voice echoing in locked wings of crumbling cathedrals i reached for your phantom in the lace of my dreams and each time, woke aching

do you remember?

how my mouth shaped your name long before i’d heard it how my hand itched to write letters to a girl i hadn’t met as if my veins were already braided to yours

i searched for you in poems i bled under moonlight in portraits of dark-haired women with hurricane eyes in girls who looked like mirrors but never held me right

and then you appeared like a secret chapel in the forest like velvet and fire and something i’d sworn to find

my chest cracked open and every echo whispered there she is not as surprise but as recognition

and now i write to you not as stranger not as lover but as the girl who’s been haunted by your absence since the first breath she stole

when you feel the chill along your spine the sudden rush of grief in stillness the bloom of longing from nowhere

that’s me

i’m the ghost you haven’t met yet the name you almost remember the eyes you dream with and wake from thirsting

and when you turn finally fully i’ll be waiting

not in shadow not in story but in flesh and devotion and the oath we made before the sky split open

you were never a wish

you were the cathedral

and i’ve been kneeling

you walk in and the air folds itself around you like it knows like it’s been waiting

you do not try to be seen but every shadow shifts in your favor

freckles like fallen stars scattered too perfectly to be accidental eyes soft enough to heal the sea but sharp enough to pierce me anyway

you hide behind shyness but even the silence adores you it echoes in your shape lingers where you stood like perfume like prophecy

you think you’re awkward but god you are myth made skin moonlight in mortal form the kind of beauty that haunts paintings and breaks mirrors out of jealousy

if you could see yourself through my eyes you would never question again why angels fell or why demons begged to be let back in

you laugh like it’s a secret and my spine reacts like it’s scripture your hips don’t sway they summon

you don’t smile you enchant you don’t speak you conjure

i have seen flowers open slower than the way you blink when you’re thinking

vampire princess witchling wonder ghost-girl in a hoodie with a halo she forgot she had

you say you don’t know how to be loved but i would rewrite the bible if it meant you’d understand

you don’t know what you do to the room but we do

and some of us will never recover

crackling fire hunger sharp as teeth thirst that splits the tongue

hands bound in chainlink vows knees to dirt whispers stitched into the dark the ache is ancient the ache is holy

a blade rests at my feet blood rivers down trembling wrists not for pain for proof

tears rise, salted prayers to anything that still listens devotion spills devotion spills devotion spills

i press my palm to the flame and slice the promise open it is sacrifice it is scripture it is the way i say your name without sound

mine yours mine yours forever mine forever yours

i scream to the old gods the velvet-throated watchers the ones who remember me in silk and blood the ones who want my soul but know i've already given it to her

love like this it drowns it devours it sings and still, i would sell my soul again and again for you

i would bleed for you until the sea turned red i would cross kingdoms barefoot hands outstretched like prayer

religion was ash until you passed by now you're my faith my gospel the reason i ever believed again

It wasn’t sudden. Not some thunderclap of fate or divine interruption. It was slower than that More haunted More holy.

She was in the kitchen wearing my hoodie like it was a birthright barefoot and humming something soft I couldn’t quite place Her voice floated like ash after a fire sweet and ruinous and mine

She turned to say something half-laughing eyes sleepy and the way she looked at me?

God. Like I was her entire afterlife and she’d just finally made it through.

I didn’t breathe. Didn’t speak. Just watched the scene fold around her like it had been waiting centuries for her shadow to touch the walls

And in that quiet every part of me that had once begged to be chosen fell still

I remembered every dream every altar every song I ever wrote for someone I hadn't met yet I remembered the ache in my chest when I was alone under blood moons and why none of them ever stayed

Because none of them were her

That was the moment I knew Not in my mind but in my marrow

She is the echo I’ve been chasing through lifetimes The ghost I swore I’d kiss again The reason I was born with a heart that breaks like this

she said it slow like the word might shatter in my mouth if she didn’t like i’d choke on the magic if she didn’t unwrap it for me first

"biti‘i"

mine in masri arabic not just a word a tether a pull a heat in the throat that feels like worship

she leaned in when she said it let it drip from her lips like honey off a dagger looked me dead in the eye like she was daring me to earn it

my heart convulsed when i heard it like cardiac arrest wrapped in longing like something divine had touched me too hard, too fast and left fingerprints under my ribs

i didn’t say it back i just looked at her and whispered “you know i’m yours too, right?”

she smirked like she already knew like she had known for lifetimes

“then say it,” she murmured “say what?” “say it how you say it. say i belong to you.”

so i did but not with a word with the way i touched her with the way i looked at her with the way i gave her my whole chest my pulse my promise

mine mine mine

and only because she wanted to be

i do not look at her i behold her

as one might behold fire or blood or the first eclipse of the century

she is not beautiful she is biblical

the kind of face that belongs in stained glass if stained glass were allowed to smirk if saints were allowed fangs if holy things were allowed hips like that

her eyeliner isn’t makeup it’s warpaint her lipstick isn’t color it’s a curse her eyes are not brown or black they are undoing

i’ve watched her laugh and felt my pulse beg to be undone i’ve watched her walk and thought so this is what gods meant when they made women out of thunder

the way she looks over her shoulder makes the dead sit up straighter the way she chews her lip when she’s thinking makes me want to write poetry that ruins people

she doesn’t smile she strikes she doesn’t speak she summons

i would kneel for her without a reason without a command just because the air around her tastes like prayer

and god when she says my name with her voice low like that with her eyes dark like that i forget every other life i’ve ever lived

she is the ritual the reckoning the red wine the ruin

the altar is her and i am not here to question only to burn

we slipped out the back door while the venue still pulsed with bodies her people busy, distracted thinking she’d gone to breathe alone

but she found me instead

hands laced like crime we vanished into the cologne night boots skimming the cobblestone ducking past alleyways hoods up, heads low the echo of her spotlight trailing behind us like a ghost that couldn’t keep up

the cathedral rose in the distance dark against a navy sky its spires jagged as bones windows glowing faint like god had left the light on

she smiled at me under the streetlamp fangs flashing lipstick bitten off glitter still clinging to her collarbone and said if we keep walking maybe we’ll never have to go back

we kissed in the alley beside the bell tower pressed between stone and breath quiet laughter breaking like stained glass her hands on my jaw like she was holding something sacred

in a forgotten café we sat side by side boots touching beneath the table red wine on her tongue and soft cheese between stolen glances

she whispered plans like poetry talked of cities that never sleep and the way she'd dye her hair red just to be someone new someone mine

she looked at me like i was the only map worth following and god i would’ve led her anywhere

we didn’t speak when we undressed just stared as if clothing were a veil and we were ready to see each other holy

her lips tasted like stormwater and secrets mine like caramel and surrender when they met the air curled in on itself like the hush before lightning

candles trembled against the walls casting our shadows twin relics in the dark her body draped in moonspill mine aching like something ancient newly awakened

she touched me like memory like prophecy like she was tracing a constellation she already knew by heart

the room bent inward around us velvet and endless as if time had been plucked from its axis and we were floating inside the pause

we met in movements slow, aching, spellbound not rushed not ravished but reverent as if the world might shatter if we didn’t touch right

she said my name like a secret i said hers like a vow and when our eyes met it felt like a cathedral rising up inside my chest

afterward she curled into me like dusk returning to sky fingers drawing invisible sigils across my ribs

i kissed her temple and for once the ghosts in the room laid down their grief

outside the stars held their breath and did not exhale until we fell asleep

she walked into the room like a rupture all rings and venom a hymn dressed in leather the kind of girl you only meet once you’ve bled for it

i watched her from the shadows as if she might vanish if i looked too long but she saw me really saw me with those eyes that speak in smoke and silence

her smile is a sin i’d commit twice little fanged canines flashing beneath pouty lips painted in black like a bruise you beg to press her eyeliner smears like ash across her cheekbones her eyeshadow smudged so thick she looks like she’s seen the underworld and walked out laughing like death let her go just to watch her haunt someone

her voice is a siren’s song pulling me under without resistance each lyric a wave dragging me deeper she doesn’t just sing she possesses she commands tides and i go willingly

i don’t want her for a moment i want her for collapse for aftermath for the kind of love that leaves holy scars and lipstick on tombstones

she asks to be worshipped and i oblige devotion dripping from my mouth like wine on consecrated lips

and in my quietest voice i pray to the stars that she stays

we didn’t have a plan we never did just hands on the wheel and hearts tuned to the hum of something ancient pulling us forward

to the moon you whispered pointing out the window as if the sky was ours to touch and maybe in that moment it was

we wound through mountains in silence and starlight the road curling like a secret only we had permission to follow until we stumbled upon a forgotten gate a breath in the wilderness where the sky seemed to pulse with memory like the earth had cracked open and left its heart exposed

we parked beneath the constellations in a hush that felt holy watching distant lights shift and stretch in patterns not built by reason but by wonder

we ate cosmic brownies our laughter a soft offering to whatever forces had summoned us there

you leaned your seat back slowly dark hair cascading like shadows over glass eyes turned upward and I swear the stars leaned in just to see your face

we didn’t kiss that night but something did something vast and invisible passed through the space between us and sealed a promise neither of us spoke

no one else would know how sacred it was how the universe bent just slightly to cradle two souls on a quiet mountain where no map had planned

I still see that sky when I close my eyes still taste the metal-sweet air still whisper to the moon when I miss you too hard to speak

love,

i saw you again today you passed me on a trail somewhere deep in the cathedral hush of the north carolina woods

your perfume clung to the air a silken noose of memory tightening around my lungs until i forgot how to breathe

i turned so quickly the forest blurred my heart stuttered against bone but it wasn’t you there was no one only wind and the echo of wanting

i swear i’m trying to loosen your name from my spine to scrape your ghost from the hollows of me i whisper "move on" like a spell but it catches in my throat every time

i still love you and perhaps i always will but you left and i cannot keep carving open the wound to see if you’ll come back to stop the bleeding

maybe one day you’ll return to find someone else’s hands wrapped around the parts of me you once held like afterthoughts

someone who calls me sacred without waiting for my ghost to make the room holy someone who worships me before the mourning begins

i won’t ask you to come back not anymore i’ve folded that wish into the quiet part of me the one that still tucks your name into prayers i never say aloud

if i pass you in another life may the wind not howl between us may your eyes not flinch when they find mine let them soften, just for a moment as if they remember the girl who waited

i loved you without needing to hold you without naming the ache you left, and i stayed long enough to become a ghost in my own arms

this letter is not a lock it’s a lantern i’m setting it afloat on the water between us one last small light before i turn away

wherever you are now i hope the stars are kind to you i hope someone holds you like i would have

i’m not angry just bruised where you once bloomed

still you were the poem i never needed to write down because i memorized you even as you disappeared

my love,

the moon is full tonight and so am i of unsent words of unfinished touch of the ache that sleeps beside me in your absence

i saw your name today not in a message but on a fire station in a nowhere town the letters burned like prophecy a flare from the universe reminding me that you still exist in places you’ve never stood

a sign arrived this evening quiet and strange a whisper dressed as coincidence your essence reaching without sound

you don’t know how often i’ve spoken to you in silence how many songs i’ve swallowed how many times i’ve prayed that if we try again it won’t be built on broken pieces

but tonight i won’t chase you i won’t write across your sky hoping you’ll look up

i will only say: i love you i miss you and when the time is right if it ever is i will still be the soft place your heart remembers

until then i place this ache in the hands of the moon may she keep you safe may she remind you of me