Esther Racah Writer & Literary Blogger

Tag: poetry

  • Unloved And Still Alive

    Unloved And Still Alive

    Unloved and still alive
    Burning inside like a bursting candle
    Shunned by the stars
    Forsaken by my own fate
    I wandered in my idyllic imagination
    Careless about the consequences of my quest
    So in silence I remained, keeping my stillness and avoiding any apprehension
    I had been cast away from the realm of certitude
    And I had embraced the illusory world of swoon
    Embracing the unknown was my main aim
    Since I lived with the constant suspense of the unpredictability of the events that would unfold before me

    I saw the traces of shame on the walls of a glorious temple
    Remembering that once upon a time, they were covered with the names of those who once enjoyed privileges and gifts
    Although I saw their shadows fading in the void, I knew that their presence was there
    Underneath the oblivious dusty tapestries and carpets, there were the spirits of disgrace
    How long could that secrecy have been hidden?
    It was a question resonating in my mind
    How could it even have been possible to leave such a precious wall so tainted and hideous?

    A crowd of paid names was pasted onto ephemeral history
    Then, years later, it was peeled away, leaving one of the grand palace walls flayed by adhesive and a code of silence
    Names faded away like ethereal legends erased by the wear and tear of time
    Not even the wear and tear of their fake smiles and affected bows could erase what was obvious even to the marvellous works of that now decayed temple
    I saw but I didn’t forget
    Unloved and still alive
    I was an accidental witness to dreadfulness and grotesqueness
    Everything seemed to be so unreal and absurd I couldn’t even admit it as a bare reality and an ugly truth

    The sky was cloudy and the rain fell all over the magical palace with its infernal caves
    The more I walked erratically, the more I felt like I had lost the old version of myself
    I had drunk the poison of my intuitions that were verified by a harsh reality
    I had become inebriated on a potion that had been offered to me just when I didn’t want it
    And although the ghastliness prevailed, so did I
    I cherished my essence of a drama queen and goddess of darkness
    Since I chose to belong to the unseen world of dark shadows and enigmatic secrets

    Although I was unloved by mortals, I was still alive in various shapes like an ethereal creature of an invisible kingdom
    I had recreated myself from dust and ashes
    While the time slipped away like sand in the wind
    For I became what I could never have imagined
    A lost butterfly in an abyss of turmoil and deceit, overflowing my imagination with illusory chimaeras
    I endured a world of wretchedness and cynicism, facing every horror wrought by mortals
    At the very end, there was never an end
    The decay of the perishable world never ceased, but it persisted inexorably
    And I stared at the stars as the only act of salvation for my lonely and broken heart.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Sparkles Of Spell And Starlight

    Sparkles Of Spell And Starlight

    Sparkles of spell and starlight rained over me in my luscious garden of roses and bones. The shining stars were celebrating a feast in the voluptuous night sky.

    I fell in love with the glistening starlight and the sublime scent of my roses. I could taste the bitterness of melancholy in every drop of enchantment I was able to sip quietly in my secret refuge.

    Locked and invisible to mortal gaze, I could freely talk to mirrors and ask questions to the wind. In the dark and gloomy night sky, I could glimpse sparkling gems casting glares across the clouds.

    Nonetheless, I carried the burden of my tragedy, unaware of what love truly meant. I felt protected in my intimate garden of passion and forbidden desires, where I fantasised about lovely blossoms and sharp thorns.

    The mesmerising night was celebrated by the stars and the moon, which sighed with delight and surprise. I dreamt of extravagant flowers blooming like arcane mysteries.

    Awakened and dizzied, I relied on my derealization, and I could perceive all the things, which couldn’t be perceived by ordinary mortals. I have seen degradation and decay creep into magnificent works of art silently and subtly.

    I was made of chaos and starlight. I became the lover of my cosmic dreams, which accompanied me to bewitching forests and labyrinths of perdition. I had embraced my doom and my oblivion.

    Not far away, I could hear the ocean’s shore stuffed with broken seashells and withered rose petals. A salty breeze dazzled me by making me remember sugarcoated lies and bitter betrayals.
    
    My heart beat fast like a comet star of fire and ice. I had become the queen of the night and darkness, and I followed the rules of madness and frenzy. I enjoyed casting tainted spells on mortal souls.

    Sparkles of magic and starlight unleashed free in my bizarre fantasies during a winter midnight in my secret garden of dead trees and faded blooms. I felt the discomfort of my mystic intuition that had me see much more of what I wanted to know.

    I leaned against the stone wall of my gloomy dwelling. I had finally caught a glimpse of every single circumstance that I had imagined clearly in my previous dreams. I wished I were wrong and I wished to become silly like those lost creatures wandering in search of a phoney love.

    And therein I was, waiting for the moon to rise again in the valley of crystal pebbles and alluring pale roses. I shunned the exquisite appetites of passion that had destroyed me in my past existence.

    No mirror could ever hurt me any longer, at that very moment of awakening and awareness. I sparkled like a shining star among bones and candles. No ghouls could ever have hurt me now that I transformed into an imperturbable glimmer of starlight.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Upon The Petals Of Intoxicating Beauty

    Upon The Petals Of Intoxicating Beauty

    Upon the petals of intoxicating beauty, as if it were a marvellous flower, I found my haven of love and dreams. I lost touch with my wisdom and embraced my unconscious desires. Passionate as I was, perpetual flames scorched my heart, where all my most audacious secrets were embalmed.

    The winter storm came suddenly, and it made all my flowers fade to a haze of stardust. Love and dreams rumbled in my heart like thunderbolts. In stupor and wonder, I fell into an eternal slumber, in which I couldn’t suffer or feel despair. Frozen and benumbed, I became a part of a realm beyond time and space.

    Among stars and clouds, I could see the rainbow of my derealization. I was inflamed and frightened by my own trepidations. I attempted to convey my liberty from past chains, as they strove to bring me down into the abyss of misery. What could I have been in other realities I knew not, while I was lost in broken remembrances.

    The frigid breeze unleashed remembrances and released ancient phantoms from my early past. A vortex of emotions stirred inside me, emptying me of all my enigmas. I wished I could understand what was happening in that very moment. Nevertheless, stupor and hallucinations kept me from wisdom and sanity.

    I felt innocent and fierce, although a bitter dread attempted to fill my heart with infinite emptiness and anguish. I celebrated my resentful loneliness as a treasured gift very dear to me. Every feeling overwhelmed me, and I kept freezing. Every cherished devotion made me hide in the most remote haven.

    I started to talk to mirrors even when they were broken. Each mirror whispered words I didn’t wish to utter or hear. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t remember my past, since I had lost all connection to past ghouls. I couldn’t find out who I was and where I was. None of my questions had ever found their answer.

    Upon the petals of intoxicating beauty, as if it were a poison spell, I found my demise and eternal doom. My fragility induced me to weep, and I screamed into the darkness of the inexhaustible night. My tears engraved every pang upon my face, running down like garnet streams.

    Thorns and brambles wrapped themselves around me delightfully, making me rejoice with euphoria and bliss. In the ecstasy of contrition and mortification, I found my utmost merriment. Lying helpless and disconsolate, I followed the trails of my reveries, hoping in vain to remember my name.

    I dreamed of exquisite flowers and sweet poisons. I fantasised about petals of intoxicating beauty, until dark shadows dragged me into the abyss of obliteration. I might have been cast into a realm of demise, where spirits and underworld creatures offered me festive and joyful torments.

    In dizziness and elation, I was struck by magical starlight and thunder. Upon the petals of intoxicating beauty, as if it were a marvellous flower, I was defeated and cast away. And lost in the labyrinth of my souvenirs, I could no longer distinguish delusional fantasies from my own ruin.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Sinking Underneath The Ocean Floor

    Sinking Underneath The Ocean Floor

    Sinking underneath the ocean floor
    With a painful grief like chains of sorrow
    Feeling disoriented and lost
    Like the death had reached for my heart with its numbing breath
    While I was letting the water and earth take advantage of my body

    I felt dark shadows and gods from the underworld touch my soul
    They imprinted their fire branding upon my hand of clay
    The path was established for eternity
    And I awakened as one of their kin, reborn in shadow.
    Elisabetta

  • The Abyss Of Nothingness

    The Abyss Of Nothingness

    The abyss of nothingness swallowed all my fractured desires
    The fear that gripped my heart and that sense of calm, of stability that took hold of my life made me a helpless and insignificant creature, invisible to mortals, yet at the same time the target of their cruelties.

    How much I wished to be different, to be accepted, and to be treated with great respect for who I truly was. But in truth, my entire life was a series of piercing endurance of inhuman suffering, humiliations, cruelties against me, deceit, mockery, traps, attempts to undermine my being, violence, and all the most barbaric and terrifying acts against my soul and myself.

    My life had not been a normal existence—one that no one could have understood. My experience was not a common one. I had lived through a time when my dream had encapsulated me in an ideal, evanescent, and ethereal reality. No one could see me, especially during that period of apparent death. Yes, because for ten long years I had not lived—I had fallen into a deep and fatal dream, isolated from everything and everyone. I had built my own kingdom of dreams and illusions, into which, day by day, I entrusted my very self.

    All the hourglasses in my dwelling had come to a halt, and the flow of time had lost all meaning. The disconnection from the truth that surrounded me had become both a tendency and a habit—one that turned into law. Indeed, I had become like a crystal frozen in time, like a statue untouched by its passing. I carried within me that immaterial sense of my heart, trapped in a confining aura.

    I no longer cared what society thought, nor what people might perceive of me. And so it remains. For my rarity and my strangeness are imperceptible to any human heart. I was accused of things that never were, of things my heart could not even fathom. Everything had vanished like soap bubbles. Nothing remained—only bitter memories or sorrowful ones that dragged me down into the depths of an untouchable abyss.

    Delicate and fragile as I was, I had lost the ability to love, to admire, and to obey mortals. I no longer saw them as similar to me, but rather, I perceived other beings—creatures who had no voice in the human condition—as kindred, as dear to me. And so it was that the abyss of nothingness possessed me, and it will always possess a part of my soul. For I belong to the emptiness and to the darkness.
    Elisabetta

  • The Kingdom Of Paradoxes And Absurdities

    The Kingdom Of Paradoxes And Absurdities

    The kingdom of paradoxes and absurdities was the place where bullying and arrogance reigned supreme, sovereign over vulgarity and stupidity. They wallpapered the walls of every place that held court in such a realm.

    Anything that could be imagined was both unreal and real at the same time. It could exist or not exist. Absurdity, however, was the master of the place. Thus, everything my logic deemed possible was tangible and predictable. In truth, it could neither take place nor be actualised in such sovereignty.

    I cannot say that I was dreaming, nor can I say that I was awake. In a state of shock and surrender of my ego, I could no longer even discern whether I was daydreaming or hallucinating. All I could say was what my sensations and perceptions made me feel in every part of my soul and heart, in every part of my body.

    Although I had firmly decided not to bend to the will of others, not to bow down or worship the conventions imposed on me persistently, I fell into a deadly trap—a kind of imprisonment, a state of captivity from which I could not free myself. Invisible chains that I felt and perceived in my body and heart held dominion over my life and my way of thinking.

    My jewellery box had been plundered. All my secrets had been revealed by indiscreet tongues. And my protection had vanished. It was as if I had become a defenceless flower in the midst of a threatening desert.

    I had to say goodbye to my version of myself, which was no longer alive. I had to say goodbye to all those visions that had deceived me falsely, when my naivety clouded my sight.

    In the kingdom of paradoxes and absurdities, I had to succumb and suffer. I had nowhere else to go. And the more I tried to escape, the more it seemed that this strange land expanded beneath my feet, preventing me from crossing its high and menacing walls. And what could the sky do but watch me, almost mocking me in an indifferent and cynical manner.
    Elisabetta

  • The Ninth Seal

    The Ninth Seal

    The ninth seal
    Because the hour was nine. Or almost.
    Paris wept softly blue through cobblestones and gaslight.
    A monster came,
    not with claws nor teeth,
    But with wheels,
    A chained demon in place of horses,
    and the roar of hatred and madness disguised as an engine.

    He saw me.
    He chose me.
    He had determined that I had to die by his shameful hand
    The madman with the skull face,
    The carriage forged in a nightmare,
    drunk on fury,
    under a wicked spell,
    his infernal claws trembling not from fear —
    But from the thrill of ending me.

    And I,
    Just a girl in a pale embroidered dress,
    Crowned with strands of gold and unarmed,
    But not unguarded.

    For something stopped him.
    Something unseen.
    A force older than rot,
    stronger than rage,
    woven from secret whispers and gold light
    spilt from my angelic protector gaze.

    The wheels screamed.
    The demons reared.
    And time stopped to exist
    As the carriage froze inches from my heart.

    Behind me,
    two hags —
    with teeth like monuments and gums raw as hunger,
    bald as ancient ruins,
    laughed as if grace were weakness
    and survival, shame.

    Their laughter didn’t touch me.
    I walked on,
    not broken.
    Not bowed.
    My feet were flame and precious gemstones.

    I passed through death
    I passed through judgment
    as one who had died before —
    and been reborn
    With mirrors behind her eyes
    and dustless bones.

    No prayer was spoken.
    No sword was drawn.
    But a pact was sealed in starlight and crystal blaze.

    And so I say:

    Nine are the circles, nine the keys.
    I cloak myself in stone and destiny.
    He who looks sees nothing, he who listens hears no sound,
    But I stand guarded, armed with beauty,
    And no evil enters where nine times I have said yes.
    Elisabetta

  • Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere in my dreams, random thoughts enveloped my mind, and the bitter memories of what I have lost—of my buried treasures—saddened my heart.

    It was as if I had surrendered myself to my own steps, walking down an avenue lined with dead trees, and with closed eyes I had defied the wind, which whispered to me words and secrets I no longer remember.

    Weighted down by my anguish, I could not see a glimmer of light, of hope, that might guide me in a clear and lucid direction. All I could find was only chaos and fear—a dread that tormented me, the fear of never being able to grasp my dreams, of never being able to enclose them within the cage of my heart.

    As much as I longed to cling to life, to my plans and dreams, their manifestations fell into the abyss of emptiness—an abyss that sought to swallow me into its chasm.

    And I remembered all the principles that had been taught to me, shaped like a golden cage in which I was made to live my entire life—bound by rigid conventions, dark as chains coiled around my ankles and wrists, suffocating me like sly ivy twisting about my neck, its soft and slender leaves wrapping my face in a silent, silken strangle.

    No, absolutely not. Stupidity has never belonged to me, nor hypocrisy, nor superficiality. And yet, I have always stood beyond an invisible wall—between myself and other mortals, who have always found me unusual, strange, even impossible to define within their social and mental structures.

    Excessively extreme in my obsessions, in my feelings, in my passions and in my visions. I have always been—and still am—a visionary, a dreamer at the mercy of events that have never truly belonged to me, for even now I find their traces in the vault of my past, like fragments of memories scattered across the sky above my head.

    Somewhere in my dreams, I’ve got lost in the labyrinth of reveries, trying to find myself—but in vain, for, in truth, I have never known myself, and I have never found who I truly am. I have always lived with the illusion of knowing, the illusion that others spoke the truth to me—as if their words were pearls of wisdom, as if they could guide me.

    But in the end, what I found was only an illusion. Only betrayal. My heart has been permanently defiled by the torments of mortals and by the shadowy mirages that have always hindered my path.
    Elisabetta

  • The Magic Beneath Her Smile

    The Magic Beneath Her Smile

    The magic beneath her smile
    In a hush of varnished sight
    Her gaze held mine
    She was not senseless
    She was enigmatic
    A timeless masterpiece
    An eternal and sublime beauty
    As if she knew everything about me
    And all that I hadn’t yet dared to live

    Seventeen-seventeen was the arcane message
    She whispered to me in the gallery aura
    Like a cypher and a vow
    A painting is much more than a mirror
    It is the reflection of a soul into a thin surface of eternity

    The time became nineteen-nineteen
    Like wings folding back into the surface of my body
    An unlived existence was rising up from between my heart
    And it was not a fairytale or a legend
    But a secret signal and a door to another world

    Surreal fantasies became my realm
    And there I lingered silent and astonished
    Immobile like a sphinx with staring eyes
    Futile as I felt like the moments of bliss I lived in that magic kingdom of beauty and eternity
    An exquisite world where my heart beat again joyfully

    Vanity and ephemeral dreams took me to mysterious places
    Where I discovered new oddities and ancient secrets
    I wouldn’t be able to understand which spell had been cast on me
    I only knew I couldn’t resist the captivating labyrinth of arts

    The magic beneath her smile concealed arcane mysteries
    It wasn’t a prosaic artwork but a divine splendour
    Dressed in centuries of varnish
    Hid behind a shining crystal
    Surrounded by fragments of timeless magnificence.
    Elisabetta

  • Gilded Illusions

    Gilded Illusions

    Gilded illusions visited my dreams
    In the eternal night that enveloped me like a diaphanous veil
    I lingered far from every mortal sight
    In my dwelling made of stars and dreams

    The moon was bleeding silver onto withered blossoms
    And I was a phantom wandering through chambers carved from bone
    Among candles that wept in crystal flocks
    While silence deepened in this dark dungeon of memories

    Eerie whispers of the dead rose from broken mirrors
    From each cracked and gloomy surface emerged a spirit of the past
    Their hearts were cold and hollow for their ancient dismay
    And their anguish echoed until the stars of the night firmament

    Whenever I aimed to reach for the stars
    They disappeared into the emptiness
    Leaving me alone in my despair and decay
    While the striking of time split the silence like a blade

    No hesitation could help me to reacquire my wisdom
    I knew that I had lost my freedom to embrace a life of madness and turmoil
    Nothing could have altered this realm of death and decadence
    Every divine bliss was destroyed by my fate

    I belonged to the realm of dust and decay
    I was reduced to following the darkness
    The more I wept, the tighter drew the chains of my bondage
    All my gilded illusions faded away in the void

    Surrounded by the hollowness of dilapidated sarcophagi
    I heard lullabies of sorrow that hovered like ghouls
    Shadows long departed from the realm of life
    They waited to converge on the abyss of the underworld

    My chains transformed into silver and gold serpents
    They became my guardians in this surreal world ruled by illusion and deception
    Crowded by hissing ghosts and perpetual twilight
    And in this sublime dejection, I found my refuge.
    Elisabetta

© Esther Racah 2026. All rights reserved.