The Quiet Inside

[etherealwhispersofziah]

And in the hollow of the darkest night, where the sky had swallowed every star, he was there the brightest light that dared to exist.

And when the flames rose like demons, devouring the forest and turning all to ash, he was the lone tree left standing, untouched amidst the ruin.

And when the storms came upon those endless autumn nights, when the heavens wept and the rain fell like sorrow, he was the hood of my coat the shelter that kept me from the cold.

But what do I do without him?

Without the telescope to find the brightest star.

Without the border that guarded the tree from the burning world.

Without the hood that shielded me from the rain that now falls upon my skin.

Rain.

Dust.

A darkened sky.

And I remain here, wandering through the silence, wishing the stars would return…

Wishing he was here.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

I hate feeling like I’m on the wrong side of the internet at times.

Nothing is more frustrating than being told that I’m “diluting” my identity, that I’m not pro-Black, or that I’m betraying my community simply because I choose to date someone outside of my race.

My Blackness is not something that can be erased by who I love. It is a part of who I am — my experiences, my values, my culture, and my connection to my community. Loving someone from a different background does not take away from my commitment to my people or my pride in where I come from.

You can care deeply about your community while also building a relationship with someone who has a different background. A person’s partner does not define their loyalty, identity, or beliefs. People should be judged by their actions, their character, and the way they show up not by assumptions.

At the end of the day, I know the values I stand for and the kind of person I choose to have in my life. I would never choose someone who disrespects my identity, my culture, or my community. Who someone dates does not automatically reveal their beliefs; their actions do.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

The rush of the dark syrup,

the ancient current that crawled through every organ,

was still there.

From crown to bone,

from flesh to shadow,

everything appeared to be in its place.

But look deeper.

Nothing.

Nothing but that enormous, grotesque,

square-shaped heart—

rotting, blood-soaked, and ravenous.

A cursed thing that consumed without hunger,

that beat without life,

that swallowed everything it touched.

That heart.

Only that heart remained.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Seeing him cry for the first time was like watching a mountain fall beneath its own snow. At first, only a single flake drifted down, then another, and another, until the weight of it all could no longer be held. Every quiet avalanche that followed carried years of silence with it.

You couldn't stop that overwhelming feeling of connection. Seeing him cry for the first time after knowing him for so long was something I could never have prepared for. The yearning I had carried for him through so many years, and the love that never once abandoned my heart, only deepened as I watched him fall to his knees and weep.

It was as though he had opened the hidden chambers of his heart for me to wander through to trace every worn page, every forgotten book, every shadowed inch of his soul. It revealed how true our connection had always been, how hauntingly beautiful it was to love him, and how sacred the trust he placed in my hands truly was.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

The last rays of sunlight slip beneath the horizon, and the heavens darken beneath a veil of gathering clouds. As night descends, I find my thoughts drifting to him.

I think of the gentle melody of his voice in the morning, the grace of his touch, and the quiet peace that follows wherever he goes. They say the night is comforting the darkness, the stillness, the hush that settles over the world. Yet tonight, it is not the night I long for.

I long for him.

For the warmth of his embrace, the tenderness of his words, the softness of his kisses. I have always found solace in solitude, in wandering alone beneath moonlit skies. Yet what he gives me is a comfort far deeper than loneliness could ever offer.

Perhaps he is the moonlight.

The silver glow that breaks through storm clouds. The gentle light that turns darkness into something beautiful rather than fearful. He is the quiet radiance that lingers in the shadows, the calm within the midnight hour.

And perhaps that is why the night feels incomplete without him because he has become the light that guides me through it. The moon above may illuminate the sky, but he illuminates my soul.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

And for once, when I looked at the person I loved and adored, I didn’t see flames behind their eyes. I didn’t see darkness creeping over them.

I saw light sunlight, soft and gentle like rain that drips, drip, drip, into something almost holy. A beautiful person standing in stillness.

The clouds parted as I looked into his eyes, and nothing dared interrupt the rhythm of his voice when it spoke to me.

Maybe I was searching for fire to extinguish… or maybe it had been right in front of me the entire time.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

I walk this earth where fire remembers my name

and the forests grow so deep they forget the sky ever existed.

My dress trails like a soft defiance through ash and root,

lifted only by the wind that chooses to follow me.

Somewhere between thorn and shadow,

a second set of footsteps learns the rhythm of mine.

They do not speak of holding, yet the fabric rises where their hands pass,

as if the world itself has decided to be gentler in their presence.

Branches that once closed like judgment begin to split into passage,

not broken, but persuaded into making way.

And what was once steel at my side

becomes something the dark recognizes twice.

Not mine. Not theirs.

but a quiet inheritance between moving figures,

glinting only when the trees forget to look.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

The place was abandoned, swallowed in dark.

Dust hung in the air so thick it dragged my breath into coughs,

scraping my throat like ash.

Night pressed in dense, disordered, unkind.

Quiet fractured only by something not quite real.

Hyenas howled somewhere beyond the black.

Pitter-patter footsteps? Or memory pretending to be sound?

Nothing there felt larger than fear.

I held him.

His body cold, pale too still for something once alive.

A tremor ran through him, or through me,

and I could no longer tell where his ending began and my mind broke apart.

The smell… it clung,

lodged itself behind thought, behind reason,

until hunger and horror blurred into the same breath.

To hold the man I love.

To hold the thing I had always reached for in the dark.

But I made a choice.

And now he is here still—

not gone, not truly.

Maybe he wouldn’t mind.

He stays with me forever now,

bound in ways I can’t undo.

A gurgle of voice from somewhere inside the silence of myself,

speaking when I do not want it to speak.

I couldn’t help it.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

And the moon was him, beautiful in a quiet, aching way.

Its craters like freckles scattered across pale skin, as if the sky itself had learned his face by heart.

Far above, it hung in silence, a glowing circle that refused to leave me, even from miles away.

It felt like him, like longing made visible, like something soft and endless pulling at the edges of my soul.

To look at it was to remember him, and to feel everything at once.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Loving someone is never a waste, even through the hardest seasons. Love is not something you simply succeed or fail at, it is something you live through, something you learn by being inside of it. It is an experience that teaches you gently and sometimes painfully how to love harder, how to love softer, how to recognize what is real and what is not.

There is no such thing as a perfect person, or a perfect partner, or a perfect child, or a perfect anything. That kind of perfection does not exist in human form. What exists instead is effort, growth, and the willingness to keep trying even after mistakes are made. And most of life is not about never falling short, it is about what you choose to do after you realize you have.

Some things we outgrow, some things we repair, and some things we simply learn from. Becoming a better person is not about being flawless, it is about being honest enough to see where you can improve and brave enough to actually do it. That can be as simple and as difficult as trying to be healthier in your mind, kinder in your words, or more intentional in your actions.

Yes, people hurt each other. Yes, we have all made choices we are not proud of. But there is something deeply human in saying, I did that, and I will do better. Not because you are forced to be perfect, but because you are grateful enough for life itself to keep growing inside of it.

We are here on a planet where every day is a chance to wake up and try again. Not everyone gets that chance, and that alone makes existence something fragile and meaningful. It is okay to not have everything figured out. It is okay to be inconsistent. It is okay to be in progress instead of complete.

Life is not asking you to be perfect in every second you are given. It is asking you to be present in them. So do not spend your time chasing perfection that does not exist. Spend it becoming more you, more honest, more aware, more alive.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

You ever think

about the zombie apocalypse

and how it would not look

like the movies promised us?

No dramatic music.

No perfect monsters

with clean wounds

and sharpened teeth.

Just rot.

Flesh folding into itself,

skin peeling like wet paper,

the smell of death

dragging through the streets

before the bodies ever did.

Because people die every day.

Every second, somewhere,

a mother is being buried,

a child is being mourned,

a casket is closing

for the last time.

So there would be fresh ones too.

Bodies that still looked human enough

to make your stomach turn.

Cold pale skin.

Sunken eyes.

Thin arms reaching forward

like they still remembered

what it meant to be alive.

And some would be worse.

Nothing but walking skeletons,

jaw hanging loose,

bones pushing through rotted flesh,

empty eye sockets

staring like abandoned windows.

But the thing I always think about is this:

how would they escape?

Six feet beneath the earth,

locked inside velvet lined coffins,

buried beneath dirt and flowers

and prayers.

Would the scratching start first?

Would anybody hear it?

If something like that ever happened,

surely we would know quickly.

Hospitals.

Morgues.

Funeral homes.

Freezers filled with the newly dead.

Someone would see something.

Someone always does.

Maybe that is why funerals

rub me the wrong way.

Because it is the last beautiful moment

before nature takes the body back.

The last time we call them by their name

before decay erases the evidence

that they were ever human at all.

Then comes the rot.

The smell.

The maggots crawling through silence.

And somehow

humanity made rituals out of it.

Candles.

Flowers.

Black dresses.

Soft hymns in quiet rooms.

A beautiful disguise

for something so horrifying.

Still, in a strange way,

there is something poetic about it too.

How humans learned

to survive the knowledge of death

by turning grief

into ceremony.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Don’t let anyone stare you away from the beauty of love.

Love is not just a word, nor is it something merely physical that can be held, named, or confined. It moves like something older than language itself, slipping beyond the self, beyond the universe, as if it was never meant to belong to anything so small. It is infinite in the way darkness is infinite, not empty, but full of something we cannot fully name.

Love does not only comfort. It burns like fire in cathedral silence, holy and dangerous, bright enough to blind and warm enough to ruin. It is as dark as the night sky, heavy with things unspoken, yet still sacred in its stillness. It leaves marks. It alters everything it passes through. Nothing remains untouched by it.

Love is a storm dressed in beauty. It arrives with rain that softens what was once hardened, with thunder that shakes what was once certain. And then, after the ruin and the trembling, there is light again. Sunlight breaking through cracked clouds. Rainbows born from something that almost did not survive.

Love transforms. Always. Quietly. Violently. Eternally.

And even in places where it is denied or forgotten, it still exists. Every soul carries it, even those who do not recognize its shape within themselves. It lingers like a ghost in the bones of everything alive.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

People might look at us and wonder how we fit together.

How two people so different could ever find each other, let alone choose each other.

He’s extroverted, loud in the best way, always smiling like the world is something to be laughed with. I’m quieter in ways that don’t always translate. Our humor doesn’t always match, our music doesn’t always align, and on paper we look like opposites trying to stand in the same frame.

But love was never meant to be measured in similarities.

Love goes beyond words, beyond shared interests, beyond the idea that two people have to mirror each other to belong together. It isn’t built on being the same, it’s built on choosing each other anyway.

What holds us together isn’t how alike we are, it’s communication when things don’t line up. It’s compassion when we don’t fully understand each other. It’s patience when we are learning each other in real time. And it’s purpose, something steady underneath everything else that keeps us from falling apart when things feel different.

We’re still going, and we’re going strong, not because we are the same, but because we keep choosing to stay soft with each other in the places where we are not.

So when someone asks how we ended up together, I don’t think about opposites. I think about him. I think about the parts of him that matter most to me, the parts that don’t depend on similarity to feel like home.

And I realize love was never about being alike.

It was about being real, and still being chosen.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

I took his heart.

It ached. It bled.

It throbbed against my palm,

pulsing stubbornly

as blood slipped through my fingers

and fell in quiet, crimson drops.

Warm.

Wet.

Dark as a secret.

It was slick in my grasp,

almost trying to escape,

but it would not stop beating

and I would not let it go.

The smell, the mess,

the stain spreading across my skin

began to matter less.

Because beneath the ruin,

beneath the gore and the grief,

there was something beautiful.

A heart still beating.

Still alive.

Still choosing to move

even when torn from its home.

And somehow,

that was worth everything.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Let’s be honest. Black people are held to higher expectations than white people and many other races. People can deny it all they want, but it’s real. A Black kid and a white kid can be in the same room taking the same test. If the white kid fails, it’s “Oh, it was just a mistake.” If the Black kid fails, suddenly he’s a “loser,” “uneducated,” or “not trying hard enough.”

Black people are put on this impossible pedestal where we are not allowed to mess up. We are given no room to grow. One mistake and we are labeled as stupid or incapable. Meanwhile, other races are allowed grace. They are allowed to fail, learn, and try again.

People also love to bring up “Black on Black crime” as some kind of gotcha. Yes, our own communities acknowledge that it is a problem. Nobody is defending it. But people use it as an excuse to be dismissive, rude, and racist instead of actually caring about Black lives.

There is also this constant expectation that Black people are always uneducated or ignorant. This reminds me of a conversation I once had online with a white guy. I told him that even if he does not mean to be offensive, using certain words is still racist. He tried to argue back by saying, “Well, if you can say ‘cracker,’ then it’s fine.”

First of all, I do not go around calling white people “crackers.” But even so, I explained that if something you say offends people and you are told it is harmful, the right thing to do is stop. I stopped using certain words when I learned they hurt others because I actually have morals. Even if I do not personally see something as racist, if it harms people, I will not say it.

What you cannot do is say the N word and then tell Black people they are not allowed to be upset. That is not how harassment works. That is not how bullying works. Harm does not have to be said directly to someone’s face to still be targeted. When you say a word tied to an entire race, it is targeted.

Saying “my Black friends don’t care” means nothing. One or two people do not speak for most of the Black community. You do not get to justify racism by hiding behind token friends.

Then he tried to argue that I have not experienced racism. He said things like, “You didn’t experience slavery,” or “Racism today is not as bad as what your ancestors went through hundreds of years ago.”

Slavery was not just about slurs. It was about laws, segregation, violence, and systems that still affect us today. Just because slavery ended does not mean racism disappeared. We still had to fight for basic rights. We still get called these names. We still deal with discrimination.

No, I did not experience slavery, but I absolutely experienced racism. I have experienced the harsh realities Black women face every single day just trying to live normal lives.

At some point, people need to stop making excuses and stay out of other people’s business. It is the same mindset with things like abortion rights. People become obsessed with controlling others instead of focusing on their own lives. A lot of the time, it is white men inserting themselves everywhere because they want power or attention.

This is not just about saying a word. It is about control, and that is what they really hate.

I ended up blocking the guy because he kept trying to tell me I should not be mad about him saying the word just because his friends are Black and they do not care. That does not erase harm. That does not make it okay.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Crawl

I crawled across the dark wooden floor.

Blood slicked down my hands with every slow movement.

It felt like I was a soldier

creeping through the trenches—

silent, shaking, praying not to be seen.

Because I knew… if I was caught—

bam.

Anyway.

I kept crawling.

The blood grew thicker—

darker, heavier—

until it clung to me like regret.

With each drag of my body,

I could hear the screams of the ones

who fell before me.

Their voices rattled beneath the boards,

hearts still beating under my palms.

I crawled and crawled,

but the voices wouldn’t stop.

“How could you?” they screamed.

“Why must you crawl?”

Their disgust filled the air—

their disbelief burned hotter than the blood itself.

Still, I moved forward,

through what was left

of their once-living presence.

They wouldn’t stop.

They never would.

Until finally,

I rose from the floor,

walked off the roof—

and everything went dark.

Too dark.

Dark for hours,

days,

years.

Until someone came again.

Touching our stomachs,

our hearts—

squeezing our minds

as they crawled over me.

My gut twisted open,

my throat tightened—

and only then did I realize

what the blood had been

the whole time.

[etherealwhispersofziah]

Fortunately, I am just a sheep at the end of the day,

following the herd, nibbling on the grass they leave behind.

Some days, I wish to see the black sheep again.

We used to play, like in the old times…

but I remember what occurred.

What he did to our innocence,

and to our grass—

the once-beautiful field

burned by his sick fire.

Still, I’m a little afraid of him.

Yet me and the rest of the flock

follow from a distance.