POETRY – ANNABELLE SERIES
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Memoirs of Madness 