Category: Poetry

POETRY – ANNABELLE SERIES

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no witness, no audience, just the truth between heartbeats

The tunnel stretches ahead of her—long, dark, indifferent.

She doesn’t rush.

She lets the silence catch up to her, swallow her, settle in her bones.
The train is late, but she doesn’t mind. Waiting doesn’t scare her anymore.

Waiting used to mean standing still, vulnerable. A sitting target.
Now it means patience.
Preparation.

The air is cool against her skin.
Tiles sweat under the flickering overhead lights.
Her reflection is warped in the wall’s glossy surface—sharp in places, blurred in others.

A reminder:
She is not what she was.
She is not yet what she will be.

---

She glances over her shoulder—not out of fear, but calculation.
The old Annabelle would have flinched at the sound of footsteps, would have blurred her edges, and made herself small.

The woman standing here now doesn’t shrink.
She watches. Measures.
Calculates the distance between herself and the unknown.

After Jimmy died, she lost herself.
She became someone she wasn’t proud of.
Someone she didn’t know.

But that version of her—the one who bled for approval, who clung to applause like oxygen—
that version couldn’t have survived this silence.

She’s learned that some things can only be reclaimed in the dark.

Not through force.
Not through performance.
Through stillness.

Through the deliberate act of not running.

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A sound. A shift in the tunnel air.
She feels it before she hears it—the train, dragging itself closer, howling through the underground.

Her heart stutters once, hard.
Not from fear.
From memory.

She could stay.
It would be easier.
Familiarity has its own gravity—its own kind of safety, even when it bruises you.

Her hand tightens around the strap of her bag.
Fingers brushing the worn leather like a lifeline.

Leaving feels like tearing a page from a book mid-sentence—violent, unfinished.
And part of her wonders if she can really do it.
If she’s strong enough to survive what comes after the leaving.

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The train arrives, a sigh of metal and momentum.

She doesn’t move yet.
Not for a breath.
Not for two.

Slowly, she slips her hand into her pocket.
Fingers close around cool metal.

Jimmy’s lighter.
The old, battered one he used to fidget with when conversations got too deep.

She rubs her thumb across its surface, worn smooth from years of hands that never really rested—
and feels the small dents, the scratches, tiny scars from thousands of times he dropped it trying to fancy-light his cigarette.
He always looked so goofy doing it—
goofy in a beautiful way.
The kind of way that made you giggle without thinking.

The memory sneaks up on her—
and for the first time in a long time, it makes her smile.

---

She hears the buzz of the flickering overhead lights.
The silence echoes back at her, not empty now, but full of reminders—
of who she used to be.
Of the hollow ache she carried before she learned how to fight.

Defiance is what she lives for.
It’s stitched into her now—the refusal to vanish, to apologize.

But the thought edges in—quiet, undeniable:

She must smile and drop the facade.

She must be who she’s here for.

Not them.
Not even Jimmy.
Herself.

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And then—soft, impossible—
she hears it.

Jimmy’s voice.

Low, steady, the way it used to be when she needed reminding who she was.

“Come on, babe. You got this.”

Her pulse kicks.
She closes her eyes, lets the sound settle under her ribs.

She steps forward once—

“Keep going, babe.”

Another step—

“This ain’t the end of you.”

Each stride toward the open doors drags the past behind her like a long shadow—
but his voice cuts through the weight.

“Move.”

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Right now, in this thin strip of no man’s land between departure and arrival, between past and future—

She belongs.

Not to anyone. Not to any memory.
Not even to Jimmy, though she carries him still—his watch at her wrist, his lighter warm in her pocket.

She belongs only to herself.

And maybe that’s what survival really is.
Not the absence of doubt.
But the decision to move anyway.

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The doors open, a hush of invitation and warning.

Annabelle exhales slowly, the way you do when you’re about to let go of something you loved too long.
She takes another step.

The hesitation lingers, heavy as a heartbeat—
but she carries it with her.
Carries Jimmy’s voice too.

Because courage isn’t about not doubting.

It’s about not letting doubt decide.

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When she boards the train, she does not look back.

She doesn’t need to.

She’s already left.

And somewhere in the hum of the engine and the quiet inside her chest—
she swears she hears it again.

“Proud of you, babe.”

And this time, the smile comes easier.

POETRY – ANNABELLE SERIES

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you wanted the fantasy—now meet the fallout

The light doesn’t flatter her.

It splits her down the middle—green on one cheek, red on the other.
Like a warning. Like a dare.
She doesn’t turn from it. She lets it expose her angles. Her sharpness. Her refusal to soften for their comfort.

This is not a glow.
This is a glare.

She watches the room through tinted lenses, as if the distance they create might protect her. As if dimming the world might dim what still pulses inside her.
The ache. The want. The memory.

The drink in her hand is untouched. It’s a prop. Like everything else she wears tonight.
The sunglasses.
The chains.
The silence.

They look at her like she’s a story they want to be part of.

They don’t know she’s the ending.

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She doesn’t speak much anymore—not in places like this.
Words feel expensive. Trust, impossible.

So she listens instead. To the way people try to impress through noise. To the bass that thumps like a hollow heart.
To the click of her own restraint every time someone gets too close.

She lets the glasses do the talking. Lets the braids fall like armor.
Lets them wonder what she’s thinking.

Because curiosity is safer than closeness.
Let them project. Let them guess.

It’s easier than being held wrong.

They don’t know Jimmy.
They don’t know the weight she carries in her wrist—his watch ticking, ticking, never letting her forget that she is still here and he is not.
That time moved on. That she did too. But not without cost.

After Jimmy died, she lost herself.
She became something else.
Someone she wasn’t proud of.
Someone she didn’t know.

That’s what no one sees when they look at her.
Not the reinvention.
Not the ruins beneath it.
Not the choice to survive when survival meant shapeshifting.

They don’t know how she nearly drowned in grief and came back with a mirror for a heart.
Reflective. Untouchable. Sharp.

But there was a moment, days ago—brief and disarming—when she stared at an old photo of him.
And in the quiet weight of his gaze, something shifted.

She felt something familiar when she looked at his picture.
Something that reminded her she had power.

Not the performative kind. Not applause.
But the power to stand. To remember. To continue.

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Someone approaches. Of course they do.
Men like him always do—when the lights are low and the mystery is wrapped in gloss.

“You look like trouble,” he says, leaning in with a confidence he hasn’t earned.

She tilts her head, slow. Deliberate.
Her thumb brushes Jimmy’s lighter inside her sleeve.
Click. No flame. Just memory.

She studies him the way wolves study fences.

“I am,” she says. “But not the kind you’re good at surviving.”

He laughs—too loud, too fake—but steps back.
She doesn’t flinch. She never does.

Because she’s not here to be wanted.
She’s here to remember who she is without being touched.

She’s here to prove she can be in the world again—even if the world doesn’t deserve her.

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But even now, beneath the rhythm and neon and the low hum of everything she refuses to feel—

Something stirs.

A voice not extinguished.
A hunger not silenced.

That same voice that whispered in the stillness after Jimmy left her:

Will anyone ever see the girl beneath the glass?
Will anyone reach without pulling?
Will anyone stay if she stops performing?

And for the briefest breath, she considers it—what it might feel like to answer those questions with action.
To peel the gloss. To set down the mask.
To let someone see her without preparation.

But not tonight.

Tonight is for the performance.
Tonight is for control.
Tonight is armor masquerading as elegance.

She lifts her glass—not to drink, but to steady her hand.
And in the mirrored wall, she catches a glimpse.

Not the reflection.
Not the projection.

Annabelle.

Not a ghost. Not a brand.
Not a wound in makeup.

Just a woman.

Too sharp to hold.
Too real to forget.