There’s a certain kind of darkness that isn’t about fear.
It’s about stillness — the moment when the light fades just enough for what’s hidden to surface.
I’ve always been drawn to that space in my writing. The shadow beneath calm waters. The voice that lingers after silence.
In my poems Under the Ice, The Shadowed Land, and The Stranger, I explore how darkness can both obscure and reveal. Darkness can hide things. It can also bring them to light. It can hold tenderness as much as dread.
“Under the Ice” was recently published in Prosetrics Magazine’s “Nocturnia” issue. When I wrote it, it started with an image. A frozen lake appeared, its surface was perfectly still. It concealed a depth that never sleeps. Under the Ice isn’t just about fear of what’s beneath. It is about memory. It is what we press down and hope to forget.
Beneath the silence, something stirs — slow and ghostly. The darkness here is not danger, but remembrance. It’s the pain of what won’t stay buried.
Under the Ice
For time is cradled
with these icy lakes.
I walk on my toes,
scared of falling beneath.
Afraid that the darkness
will drag me down.
Engulf me with its dark,
seductive streams.
Below, old seasons turn,
their faces blurred by frost.
If I listen long enough,
I might remember who I was.
If Under the Ice is about what we hide, The Shadowed Land is about where we wander when we lose our way.
This poem lives in the in-between — the mist between worlds, where grief becomes landscape.
When I wrote it, I wanted to convey the feeling of being suspended in the aftermath. Everything familiar still exists but no longer feels like home.
Darkness here becomes a landscape rather than a threat. A place to walk through slowly, to listen for echoes.
The Shadowed Land
The wolves roam freely
in my head at night,
through time past
and layers of skin.
By the traintracks,
they scavenge for scraps,
their ribs pressed tight
against the wind.
Digging up pieces
I thought were lost,
buried in damp soil
of a shadowed land.
In The Stranger, the darkness turns inward.
It’s the encounter with the part of ourselves we’ve left behind. This is the one who walks “in our shoes” after we’ve changed.
While writing this poem, I thought about identity as something shifting and uncertain. It’s like the way moonlight can turn your own shadow into a figure you almost recognize.
The darkness in The Stranger is not emptiness, but presence — the awareness that transformation always leaves ghosts.
The Stranger
There is a stranger
walking in my shoes.
She steps out into the night
when the air is cool.
Over moonlit meadows
she slips her feet,
whispering to mountains
sleeping beneath.
She walks long-lost trails
over steep hills —
her shadow echoing
through what silence left.
Still searching for a place
without a name.
Why I Write the Dark
I don’t think of these poems as “dark” in the usual sense. They’re not about horror, but about honesty.
Darkness, for me, is where clarity happens — where noise fades and truth takes shape.
In shadow, we see texture; in silence, we hear what’s been unsaid.
I write about the dark because it reminds me that beauty isn’t only in what glows. It is also in what endures quietly beneath the surface.
Light always begins there — in the still, unseen places that teach us how to look again.
Read more:
- How to write dark poetry (Coralynn Poetry)
- Explore the mythical world of spirit animals
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