By The Forest. Poem by MIRAK Montiel

She Was Swallowed by the Forest

The rain lied—
said it would wash away the pain,
but it only blurred the blood
and left the scars
etched deeper into her skin.

Memories rot in the corners
of her mind,
fluttering like dying moths
against cracked windows
where no light ever stays.

You can still hear her scream
when the night chokes on its last breath
in July.
Still, she rose—
shaking, splintered—
as the world collapsed
room by room around her.

Follow the fireflies,
they whisper in ash and bone.
They know the way through the forest,
they've seen the graves hidden beneath the roots.

A flickering flame
guides my hand to write her story,
scratched in silence
between the loneliest hours of my cursed life.

She lived where the wild things wept,
where even the waves dared not reach.
She prayed to gods that never listened,
prayed for a storm
to carry her away.

When she was five,
a shadow with human hands
stole what she could never name again.
Since then,
she spoke in riddles
no one ever cared to solve.

And now—
she sleeps beneath the forest,
arms crossed like broken wings,
finally still,
finally free,
in a world darker than the one that made her. MIRAK