There are certain figures who only step forward when the rest of the world goes quiet — when it’s just me, my thoughts, and whatever the night refuses to let me outrun. She came from one of those hours — one of those slow-breathing, half-awake moments where imagination isn’t something you call upon… it just breaks through on its own.

She isn’t a muse. She isn’t a dream, either. She’s something in between — a guardian grown from every vivid thing I’ve ever clung to when I was too tired to fall apart. Her crown doesn’t sit there politely; it erupts. Like memory. Like panic. Like beauty that doesn’t apologize for taking up space.

Sometimes I look at her and think: this is what my mind looks like when sleep won’t come — bright, overgrown, louder than my body feels capable of holding. She carries the last daylight with her: all the warm tones, the impossible golds, the small wild blossoms that always seem to survive the hardest seasons.

Maybe that’s why she showed up when she did — to remind me that even when everything feels dim, the color inside me hasn’t gone anywhere. She never speaks. She just keeps the colors alive until I can.