the ritual edit
when shadows breathe
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the ritual
The night crossed the threshold before she noticed,
sliding into the room with a quiet authority
that made the air feel older than it was.
A faint creak moved through the floorboards,
the sound of settled wood shifting in the dark—
as though the room itself had taken a breath.
She didn’t reach for the light.
Some truths asked to be met in shadow.
The day had followed her home—
sharp words she’d swallowed,
a heaviness she refused to name.
But the night wasn’t interested in her performance,
only her pulse.
A low flame answered her touch.
It rose fast, unwavering,
casting a clean, gold mark across the dark
as if the room were drawing a boundary on her behalf.
Smoke lifted in a slow, deliberate ribbon,
curling through the air
with the confidence of something that had been here
many evenings before her.
She watched it climb, steady and unhurried,
and felt her own breath fall into pace beside it.
Stillness gathered,
but it didn’t soothe her.
It clarified her.
She didn’t light the flame to soften the dark—
she lit it to see herself more clearly.
A quiet recognition moved through her—
not memory,
but something older than that,
a feeling that this version of herself
had existed long before the day tried to tame her.
The silent walls steadied.
Her breath aligned.
The restlessness she’d carried all day
began to lose its shape.
The flame lowered, almost in respect.
Her breath no longer held itself politely.
She didn’t claim the night.
She remembered it was hers.
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