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 Eleventh Gate stood in the underworld — silent, unmarked.
I wandered, neither living nor dead,
Caught between shadows that whispered secrets I could not grasp,
Searching for meaning in that endless twilight of souls.
17:17 appeared to me
While I was confused by the thoughts that crowded my mind
And darkened my heart,
Searching and hoping for a way — for a way out —
Which did not seem obvious,
Given that I found myself in the labyrinth of death,
In a world suspended, beneath that of the mortals.
How I found myself in that world, I think I have remembered it:
that chariot of skeletons and spectres, of demons from the underworld,
had overwhelmed me and taken me away
into their grotesque world of nightmares.
Monsters adorned in sparse and ancient garments
wore grotesque masks and stared at me with their dead,
Yet burning eyes,
as if they could read my heart,
and they sneered at my fears and weaknesses,
and at my ethereal, mortal being.
I had become a captive of that world, a world of shadows and wraiths.
Subjugated to their power, I could not resist,
And my steps grew heavier and heavier,
as if they echoed the weight of my heart,
which had become a heap of metal shards and thorns.
Exhausted and bloodless, I surrendered,
and no longer felt that languid sense of torpor and melancholy.
Horror and chills had gripped my entire body,
And the beating of my heart stopped
like a broken pendulum clock.
I crossed the Eleventh Gate, seventeen times seventeen,
And with each passing, a part of my heart fell
upon the ground made of bones and carcasses and mud and buried souls.
And thus it was that I collapsed,
into a terrible slumber.
Of death.
Elisabetta
Mirrors and dreams appeared to me as I drank from the inception of the stormy night, where silence curdled into ink, and every word I swallowed appeared as a curse in my blood.
The moon kissed my shadow, not with clemency but with remembrance. What I lost I buried in decay. What I loved I burned in darkness. Mirrors and dreams were just mere illusions.
Silent visions visited me in my eternal nightmares as I never awakened from that realm of madness and phantasmagoria. In loneliness and unconsciousness, I wandered into the garden of desires.
Untruthful chimaeras were my chaperones as I delighted myself in ethereal merriments and beauty. I lived in delusional fantasies as I forgot the feeling of fear.
I only existed in poems and hymns to share my love and obsessions. Softly, the nocturnal breeze stroked my face, and I could hear a solemn and funereal melody.
I felt invisible and ethereal, as if no mortal could have been able to perceive my presence. Indeed, I had become a spirit of the darkness; I was the shadow of my soul.
Although my everlasting passion for the sublime and beauty never left my heart, I felt the aches and pangs of a withered flowered. Seeking stability in my rooted insanity, I had renounced the world of reality forever.
The heartless fate had decided its decree to condemn me to the underworld and abandon every vestige of my past existence. Surrounded by mirrors and dreams, I surrendered to my hallucinations.
The wraiths that chased me were the evocations of my terrible memories. They strived to cast a spell on me to constrain me in the dungeon of death and blood. Where no tree and no flower ever saw life.
No mirror could recall me, no dream dared claim me.
Elisabetta
Crimson tears came from my deep distress
As I was wandering infinitely until the edges of time
Despair became my safe dwelling
And solitude was just a necessity
For I was unloved and lonely
In dungeons of grief and sorrow, I found myself
Depriving myself of solace was my favourite forte
I soaked in depression until I drowned deep in the abyss of self-destruction
I chose to live in chaos because I had lost my sanity
Madness had become my guide and my wisdom
I nullified my expectations and I indulged in destructive memories
I drank from the toxic goblet of oblivion
With the specific purpose to erase my heart
Was that feasible?
I knew not
Unlearning all my knowledge and forgetting who I was
I had become nothingness
I had become a shadow of the underworld
My soul had dissolved in the infinite void
I could only feel the darkness take possess of my body
Crimson tears hushed into rivers of blood
While the incessant storm of the night locked me up
In the total gloominess and in the most deafening silence
I had found consolation in obliteration
A funeral fanfare came to be my hymn of love and my final requiem
I embraced death, and I faded away
I was finally the queen of the realm of arcane shadows
A kingdom where I ruled over the dead and wraiths
Surrounded by hollow trees and sharp daggers
And dressed with spider webs and fragments of vestiges
I wandered through a mist filled with decay and ashes
Where nothing changed not even the slow crawl of time
No praises were to be found but only the pang of endings
I lay beneath the deformed tree branches
Among roots slick with damp and grave moss
And the night closed over me like a tombstone.
Elisabetta
A heart of stone and blood was mine in the afterlife
In my underworld abode full of evanescent masks and weeping phantoms
A magic tower of spells touching the sky and the metallic moons
Surrounded by soft clouds and dead trees
Each mask whispered terrible secrets to me
While smiling like court jesters inside the unbreakable walls of my castle
A castle made of bones and blood of my enemies
Beneath the shining firmament visited by the moons with many countenances
I was the queen of the tragic world of pity and descend
My decadence made a throne for me, carved in sorrow
And there I lingered, dressed in shining sparkles and moonlight
My gown was forged with threads of sighs and desires
My gown was the manifestation of sighs and desires
Eerie candles with their trembling flames cast light upon my visions
Longings coiled like serpents made of smoke
The walls wept decayed memories and each mirror was a doorway to arcane mysteries
My absolute silence was a hymn to all I had lost
The moons grieved the weight of my dismay
An eternal ghost similar to myself waited for me beyond my crystal windows
Ruins and beauty crowned me their sovereign
My destiny was engraved in shadow and starlight
I wandered in the labyrinth of forsaken fortunes
I felt that the ancient soil trembled beneath my steps
My heart was still carved from stone, seeking solace in vain
I couldn’t break free from the chains of my own sorrow
Although I reached for my reflection in the mirror
And I knew that this was the fate I had chosen
I knew I belonged to the occult underworld as an ethereal creature of darkness.
Elisabetta
Beneath the hollow moon, I wandered behind shadows
It seemed like a dream but it felt very tangible
It was an ethereal feeling mixed with physical perceptions
In a secret garden made of dead trees and withered blossoms
The ephemeral veil of the night enveloped me
I was an invisible creature of the night
Hiding from mortal sight and dreaming with open eyes
My visions and hallucinations had become reality
The haze of darkness cast a spell on me
Odd spirits offered me to drink from a goblet of poison
It was a magic potion of oblivion and poison
Whilst I sipped it, I fell into a deep slumber
I had forgotten my name and the place where I dwelled
I had become a ghost and a shadow of the night
Imperceptible even to the stars and the moon
I was lost in the labyrinth of my own nightmares
I waited not for my death because I was no longer a mortal
The sorrow and distress of the human world didn’t touch me anymore
I was the darkness and the night
Empowered but still a captive of this arcane underworld
Every part of my incorporeal body belonged to this dungeon of royal decadence
A victim of haunting eerie dreams, I had no other place where to go
It didn’t matter how long I could have screamed my memories
Nothing changed, and my fate stayed unaffected
I had traded my freedom for a kingdom of death and ethereal phantasmagoria
Beneath the hollow moon, I wandered endlessly
Seeking my lost heart in the maze of resentment and silver coffrets full of secrets
And each sigh of mine transformed into a raven rose.
A heart full of sorrow and a crown of black roses on my head
Nothing else.
Elisabetta
Leaving myself behind
Through the pains and fears
Anguish was my ruler
And I didn’t demand anything
Hurt was my soul made of pins and blood
The roars of the demons claiming me echoed in my head
The castle of doom was my pristine dwelling
It was made of bones and ashes
In the gloominess of the midnight
I was fleeing from death to become decadence
Leaving everything behind
My past had crumbled to sand and memories
Remembrances that followed me wherever I was going
Disgraceful was my existence and only thorns stroked me
Black roses were swallowing me like a prey
Gloaming shadows surrounded me
Beneath the indifferent gaze of the silvery moon
I could only hear laments as manifestations of the night
A mist of sorrow shrouded me like a gloomy cloak
The cold air was full of decadence
My heart slowed down at the sound of the drums of mourning
I wandered beneath the barren heavens
I had become a ghost clothed in remnants of despair
I strived to seek refuge and rescue
But all I could ever feel was the numbness of endless wandering
The world around me blurred into shadows
My realm was a graveyard of forsaken dreams
Where even the stars had eclipsed for eternity
And the winds sang elegies to my fall
In this endless procession of sadness
I was no longer a creature of the light because my heart was deceased
But I was only a phantom dissolving into a mist
Forever swallowed by the sorrowful darkness
Leaving myself behind
I left a trail of thorns and blood
My heart was torn apart
I was just a shadow of the underworld
My face was carved with tears and scars
And the paleness of death erased it all
As if all my agony had faded like dust
In the end, I vanished into the oblivion of forsaken sorrows.
Elisabetta
Bound to a spell of death
Condemned to feel the poundage of my grief
Grief that manifested each day deep inside my heart
Using memories to pierce my heart and let me languish
I knew not what I was expecting behind the doorway of my fate
The uncertainty and fears cloaked me in a dark
veil
I couldn’t see anything beyond my sight of discernment
Since I was a prisoner of my own thoughts
Bound to a spell of death
I wandered in the wilderness of my nightmares
Getting lost so many times that I embraced my disorientation
Chaos and madness were manifestations of my true self
My passions set my heart ablaze
An inextinguishable flame burning in silence
While the luminaries watched in silence
I confessed my secret desire, a forbidden desire
I couldn’t find any delight in my existence
As if joy itself were always out of reach for me
And solace was forbidden to a soulless creature like myself
Since my birth, my body has been pierced by poisoned daggers
I was bruised and my wounds bled blood and submission
I came to the edges of the abyss of death
I saw my life wither and decay to dust
And I became a part of that underworld
I felt a serpentine ivy chain me to a throne of decadence
I was a captive in the dungeon of misery and destruction
I drank from the goblet of oblivion and I forgot all my memories
The devastation of my soul was irreversible
The stars seemed to collapse in the darkness
While thunders ruled the kingdom of the night sky
Clouds swirled like ancient ghosts around my head
And the wind howled secrets no creature could bear the sound
I sat on my throne as a queen of shadows and decay
The deafening silence surrounded me
Hissing spectres crowned my dungeon made of sorrow
A wicked destiny had cast an enchantment over me that I could no longer break
I was eternally bound to a spell of death.
Elisabetta
The shadows of affliction hunted me in the night
They awakened me in the middle of my slumber
Like a fever that gripped my body with its sharp claws
It always left me crying on my bed with a bleeding heart
Submerged in my teardrops I kept my soul wide open
As if I could get more dazed than the night before
Echoes of my lost dreams resounded in my obscure chamber
They made me feel like a withered flower with no hopes
I was left, astray in the wasteland of silence
As I was a forgotten spirit, I wandered among the ruins of my soul
The abyss of void yelled my name to reclaim me as its beloved possession
Because nothing more could have saved me
If I could have erased all my distressing memories
I would have lived a bearable existence in peace and calm
Instead, I was doomed to eternal misery and the spasms of death
I couldn’t find any key to the door that was keeping me locked in my struggle
So many thoughts and fears were overcrowding my mind that I couldn’t tell
I felt overwhelmed and dizzy as I was wandering in an endless maze without guides
The shadows of affliction were cast over me like ominous ghosts
I stood immobile since panic had grasped my heart
The frosty breeze of the night froze my bones
And every mirror I encountered never reflected my authentic image
I didn’t remember my name anymore, and my purposes
Climbing ivy curled like serpents, entwining me in veins of sorrow and silence
From the instant I died, I was buried beneath layers of anguish as a captive of the underworld
Chained to cry and despair amid the indifference of stars
And the moonless night sky offered no comfort
I had chosen to hide in the darkness and never reveal myself to the light
With nothing left but a lifeless heart
I had become one of the shadows of affliction.
Elisabetta
I belong to the nightmares and the nightmares belong to me
As long as my heart still beats I will be a creature of the darkness
Anguish and distress are the reflections of me in every mirror I encounter
I have no name but my past is an abyss of obliteration
I have a dread of existing because I belong to death
I possess the gift of scorn and indifference because nobody ever loved me
I’ve always been despised and estranged by every shadow of this world
I don’t belong to anyone not even to myself
I belong to darkness and death
Having lost all those treasures I’ve cherished so dearly
Now I’m left with nothing but the dust of decay
My bones and blood and heart belong to the underworld of death
A realm that despises every miserable being parading their ridiculous triumphs with vain and frivolous pride
I belong to the nightmares and the dungeons of madness
I never follow the trail of soulless being of this material world
I stand alone in my misery and proudly away from everyone
I don’t need anyone belonging to humankind because I feel only rejection
I’m a shadow of the night and my heart belongs to whom is not anymore with me
I sealed my heart with ancient crimson wax made of my blood and tears
Pride no longer belong to my ethereal sphere, where I decided to enclose myself to avoid the corruption of falsity and hollowness
The silence that I chose to embrace is deeper than a grave
In my sanctuary reserved for the broken and cursed spirits
I despise the sunlight, and I devote my fetish to darkness
In my veins flow only blood made of sorrows and black ink
I have become the manifestation of all my screams that nobody ever heard.
Elisabetta
© Esther Racah 2025. All rights reserved.