This is what I know:
Stories are embers that refuse to die
in the breath of those
who dare to speak them,
dancing between truth
and the dream of a lie.

Pirates carve the flesh of the sea,
the tides,
whispering curses and silver-laced songs,
drinking deep from the wells of the storms,
never drowning,
never home for too long.

There are beings of fire,
hunger,
and light,
consumers of worlds in furious gleams,
and beings of sadness,
softness,
and ice,
crawling the depths of their quiescent dreams.

There is death without tears,
coldness unbowed,
silences vast for a cry to disturb,
and scriptures of tears for death,
—oh, so loud—
that they shatter the stars with the weight of each word.

And magick—oh, magick—woven in ink,
in rustles,
in laughter,
in sorrow and rage,
in spells,
in forgetting,
in stories,
in drink,
in the turning of time, of page, of dying,
in the fate of becoming,
in the sentence of being.

Yes, this is what I know:
Stories are embers that refuse to die.
They burn,
they consume,
they weep,
they ignite—
But, often, too often, they stay trapped inside.