Author's Note
I didn’t write these poems to rebuild the world. I wrote them to sift through its ashes.
Every line in this collection was born from the quiet hours — the ones where the lights flicker, the news feels heavier than the sky, and the future seems like a door that won’t quite open. In those moments, I found myself reaching for language the way someone might reach for a candle in a collapsing room. Not because it could save me, but because it could remind me I was still here.
These poems are stitched from the things we’re not supposed to admit we feel: the loneliness that hums beneath the noise, the beauty that survives in broken places, the strange comfort of knowing that even ruins have stories. They’re gothic because the dark has always been honest with me. They’re dystopian because sometimes the world feels like it’s fraying at the edges. And they’re tender because, despite everything, I still believe in the small, stubborn pulse of hope.
If you’re holding this book, maybe you’ve felt that pulse too — faint, but real. Maybe you’ve looked at the world and wondered what grows in the cracks. Maybe you’ve needed a place where the shadows don’t swallow you, but speak to you.
This is that place. These are those shadows.
Thank you for stepping into them with me.
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