There was a time I thought the night was hunting me — hours stretching thin, shadows tightening like a throat. But she came from within that darkness, not gentle, not warm, but watching.

Her eyes were wide and unblinking, carved from some ancient quiet. She didn’t arrive to comfort me. She arrived to confront me.

She showed me that the night doesn’t blind — it exposes.
The doubts I hid, the memories I buried, the pieces of myself I pretended were gone… all of them surfaced when she stepped forward.

She taught me that sleeplessness is not an affliction — it is a summons.
A forced reckoning.
A lantern held to the parts of me I refused to face.

And in her gaze, I understood:
the dark was never empty.
It was waiting.