I caught her in the mirror’s hush at 3 a.m. my reflection breathing out of time. She smiled like an unburied secret and whispered my name through the glass. I built a heaven on mute to stay clean. Silence grew claws and learned to crawl. From under the floorboards she rose, stitched together from words I never spoke. I finally knew the ghost was never leaving she was waiting for me to stop running. She asked, “Do you still call this light?” I said, “Only when it trembles.” My shadow kept the door while I hid behind my halo. She learned my pulse, my sins, my soul. Now she sings through my echo, teaching me how darkness can be home. She wound herself through my rhythm, fever threading through the sinew of sound. Every beat confessed what I refused to feel. Control was my fortress, and she turned its stones to glass. (Whisper) You called me phantom. (Scream) I was your cure. We are poison and remedy two tongues of the same storm. My shadow kept the door, and I stepped through her calm. Our hands met on the hinge light and dark breathing the same air. She taught me to bleed in measure, to drum the ruins back to rhythm. Now every scar keeps time, every wound remembers. I sleep beside her heartbeat now. No fear. No need to cover the mirror. The door stays open— and both of us walk through.
