Spirit in the Dark

Spirit in the Dark

Night falls heavy,

folding the world in its trembling hands.

I walk in the woods yet no moon watches,

the trees sway like old souls whispering prayers,

their roots clutching secrets too deep to tell.

Something stirs beside the forgotten path,

a flicker of shape, a sigh of cold breath.

I freeze, for the dark has eyes tonight,

and they remember my name.

The air thickens,

thick as the stillness before thunder.

A shadow moves across the ground,

It moves through me, not around me,

and I feel the chill of someone else’s death.

“Do you know me?” it seems to ask,

but its voice is not sound, it is feeling.

I answer with my heartbeat, quick and afraid.

It lingers, curious, then fades into the mist.

Far off, another whisper follows, softer now.

Maybe they are not cruel, only lost.

Maybe I walk with those who walked with me.

The dark grows thicker, but less hostile somehow.

I do not run. I listen.

And in the listening, I understand.

The spirits do not haunt to harm,

they haunt because they remember being human.