Alice was never a girl

They called her Alice,
but perhaps her true name was Smoke,
rising slow and silent
from letters never sent,
from altars crumbled beneath
the cold gaze of forgotten saints,
from lips that kissed her only to still her breath.

She did not fall.
She transcended.
There is a sacred difference,
between shattering
and choosing the void.

She stepped beyond the back of her own reflection,
where silver fractures whispered secrets
older than time’s first prayer,
and her eyes held the quiet sorrow
of gods who have forgotten mercy.

The wormhole was no place,
but an unspoken hymn,
a rift in the fabric of becoming,
curved like a question
too holy for a mother’s voice,
too fragile for an angel’s touch.

No rabbits greeted her,
only warnings draped in silence,
clocks weeping timeless tears,
knowing the pain of counting
souls that vanish between moments.

In that other world,
she wore her scars like relics,
held her shadow like a prayer,
whispering softly,
“I forgive the absence
of your surrender.”

She met herself,
not in cold mirrors,
but in the trembling hush of ancient trees,
in the ache beneath forgotten songs,
in the boy she once was,
before the world demanded
she choose
between breath and belonging.

She bowed not to queens,
but unstitched their crowns,
thread by sacred thread,
until all that remained
was dust,
and the infinite silence of grace.

And when she reached the edge,
there was no light,
no voice,
no door.

Only her own heartbeat:
steady, eternal
like the first drop of rain
falling
on a city
that forgot her name,
but still remembers her soul.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2025

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Lacatus Avatar
August 8, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Thank you all for your warm words! I read them in secret, the way you read a love letter, under the blanket on a late autumn afternoon. If I could, I’d raise a glass of champagne up to the height of the stars above the city and I’d toast you with foam and joy, like you toast a memory that never really left. Who knows, maybe on another evening, in another verse, we’ll clink glasses.
Lacatus Avatar
August 8, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Congratulations
Carmack Avatar
August 8, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Congrats Florin.
Daniels Avatar
August 7, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Clearly you are wide awake, & possibly enlightened, Florin. Congrats & thankyou for entering this offering ~ certainly more than a penny.x.
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