A PERFECT STRANGER

A perfect stranger

Looks back at me from the mirror,

Eyes like mine but colder,

A hollow flame flickering where my soul should be.

It steals my shadow

And walks my footsteps,

Tracing paths I thought were mine,

Filling my rooms with whispers

That taste like my own name.

I scream, but my voice

Is swallowed by glass,

And my hands pass through the reflection

As if it were smoke.

It wears my skin,

Learns my laugh,

Sleeps in my bed,

And eats my meals,

A ghost learning to live in my life.

I wake to find it waiting,

Smiling in the mirror with patience I cannot match.

Each day I shrink,

A fading silhouette behind its rising presence,

My memories dripping into its eyes.

And one night, I vanish completely,

The stranger steps out,

Perfect in every line,

Walking my streets,

Living my life,

While I linger

Only in the darkness

Behind the glass,

A shadow of a self

That never existed.

©Diana Mistera 

NIGHTBOUND

 And here we are again,

at the precise threshold where shadows congeal

and the night stills its breath.

There is no wonder left in our gaze:

we have been waiting for one another

since before memory.

Your summons asks no mercy.

It slips through me like a slow, devouring fever.

I resist,

yet my flesh knows you

long before my will dares to.

We were never torn apart

only bound by an unseen thread

drawn tight in the dark.

The moon stands full,

a pale and pitiless witness to our returns.

It exposes what I have buried

and delivers you to me

like a beautiful damnation.

Your blue eyes,

deep and perilous as midnight waters,

hold me without haste.

Within your smile sleeps a vow

that refuses the shape of words.

My heart slows,

as though it is yielding to fate.

The love I bear is not made of light.

It is gravity.

It drags me inward,

hollows me,

erases my names.

Every adjective shatters,

every word kneels.

I, who once mastered language,

stand silent before you.

Only the pull remains

the dark magnetism,

the forbidden attraction

throbbing beneath the skin.

You, legend wrought of night,

eternal wanderer of my shadows,

marked me without a touch,

wounded me where no armor exists.

I love you profoundly,

even as I attempt escape,

even as I lose myself to the abyss.

For whatever path I choose,

the night will always return me to you.

©Diana Mistera

DEVOTION

I build this shrine from ashes

each brick carved by my love for you,

each heartbeat laid, a relic to adore.

You are the spark that sings inside my soul,

a flame burning in my chest,

the pulse beneath it.

Each sight, a verse the light remembers.

Stars tremble, and time forgets to move.

Two fires feeding the same desire.

In our gazes, I see our reflection burning

a truth too fierce to stay hidden.

We are fire tasting fire.

Even the dark knew our names,

whispered them like a secret prayer,

a quiet worship between ruin and rebirth.

Even silence hums our name.

In your gaze, I find the divine undone

a pulse, a sigh, a promise breaking open.

No heaven can contain this hunger,

no prayer can tame its flame.

What is love, if not the art of burning

and calling it devotion?

Here, in the burn of our embrace,

I am whole.

So when the night forgets our names,

it will remember our flame.

© Diana Mistera 

OUR STORY ENDS WHERE SHADOWS FOLD

Our story ends where shadows fold:

Where the moon bleeds 

And silence drapes itself over broken windows.

Within words we never spoke and promises that cracked

Collapsing the reality.

Time bends and fractures like a shattered mirror.

The stars retreat,

And in that infinite dark,

All that remains, is the echo of a story

That never truly belonged to the light.

We are echoes,

Bound to the marrow of the dark,

Our words stitched into the void

Like prayers no god will ever hear.

The shadows fold, and fold again,

Until nothing moves 

But the memory of motion.

©Diana Mistera 

DECAY IS A KIND OF DEVOTION

 Whispers like silent screams

around a decay that never ends

The walls remember what the air forgets,

ghosts of breath caught in the dust

and mirrors dream of faces long gone. 

prayers that turned to ash mid-breath.

Time limps through the corridors,

dragging chains of memory and ruin.

peeling itself from the bones of the world.

Every shadow hums a name

no mouth can bear to speak. 

Portraits weep behind their frames,

their eyes aflame with endless dusk

The air tastes of sorrow and dust,

The moon hangs like an open wound,

dripping silver into the cracks of stone,

while memories crawl through the dark,

their fingers made of rust and regret.

In the quiet, something stirs

not life, not death, but the echo between them,

a song too faint to hear,

too loud to ignore

perception fails where truth begins.

© Diana Mistera 

WHISPERS IN THE DREAM

In the hush between stars, I call your name,

a whisper folded in the wings of sleep.

The sky turns soft 

and beneath a moon that never sleeps, I wander.

Each step recalls a vow.

I reach through clouds of half-forgotten light,

through rooms of dream where laughter used to stay.

My voice dissolves, a moth against the night,

a fragile hope that will not fade away.

If love is real, it hides beyond the sound,

of whispers that bloom like ghosts.

I reach out, but feel the frost there, 

where warmth and faith once grew.

The dream is dead.

Your ghost, perhaps, still hears me plead

in aisles where time decays,

where candlelight forgets to bleed,

and roses suffocate  upon their thorns. 

© Diana Mistera 

SACRED ECHOES

Echoes rise from the hollow stone,

chanting

where shadows kneel in silence.

The ruins breathe with ancient promises,

and every wall remembers

a love bound beyond flesh,

a flame that burns without mercy,

a vow etched in blood and ash.

Two souls torn, yet never apart

A sacred wound that will not close

Devotion beyond decay.

We walk as pilgrims in the dark,

carrying a love that cannot perish.

And, in the echoes of eternity, the vow endures.

© Diana Mistera