Ethereal Echoes

  Sometimes the quietest places hold the loudest parts of who we are... Tonight, I lay back on the old bench in the garden—the one that has aged alongside me. Its wooden frame groans softly beneath me, worn down by time, carrying the weight of countless moments spent in its embrace. Resting here feels more like revisiting a memory than simply lying down—like meeting a past version of myself, familiar yet distant. Above, the sky stretches wide, sprinkled with stars. I let my gaze drift, moving from one shimmering dot to another, the same way I did as a child. Back then, I believed they held stories—messages waiting for me to decode if I looked long enough. Maybe part of me still believes that. Every now and then, a plane moves across the sky, its blinking lights tracing a quiet path. From here, it’s just a tiny speck, but inside, people are traveling—toward something, away from something, or lingering somewhere in between. I wonder if they are chasing dreams, escaping, or simply sea...

  She had once believed in the world. She had stepped into it with open arms, with trust painted across her palms, with love unguarded and unmeasured. She had waited—for warmth, for understanding, for a place among them.   But the world had never paused for her. It was relentless—an unforgiving tide of motion, of voices colliding without listening, of footsteps rushing without ever stopping.    And so, one day, she stopped waiting for it to love her back.   The city around her pulsed with chaos—honking horns, rushed footsteps, endless noise. It all pressed in on her with invisible claws, sharp and suffocating. Her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, her heartbeat thudding in her ears like an unwanted anthem. The stress etched itself into her bones, and with trembling hands, she reached into her bag—not for pills or water, but for the only medicine that ever truly worked: a book.    Peace. That was all she ever wanted. Not admiration. Not...

   Have you ever met the right person at the wrong time? It’s like drowning—not in water, but in life. You’re sinking slowly, breathless beneath the weight of your world. The deeper you go, the more silent everything becomes. Your limbs float like forgotten thoughts, your chest tightens with each heartbeat. The fight within you begins to fade, replaced by a quiet, eerie acceptance.   And then—you see it.   A thick, gnarled root drifts above you, cutting through the distorted light. It’s strong. Steady. Alive. You can almost feel its warmth through the freezing depths. That root is them— the person you never knew you needed until your soul screamed for help .   And suddenly, hope flares—wild and desperate. Every cell in your body strains to reach, to rise. The stillness inside you shatters. You want to live again. You want to breathe again. But the ocean is cruel, and time is unkind.   Because you’ve sunk too deep.   Your legs a...