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