Landscape of Ghosts
by Crystal Craig

There are moments
when the noise folds in on itself—
when even a crowded room
becomes a thin place.

A hush between worlds.

I move among them,
uncontained,
edges blurred like smoke in twilight.

Familiar.
Safe, in a strange way.

Loneliness here is not sorrow.
It is gravity.
A soft pull,
constant,
unspoken.

I do not resist.
I orbit.
I vanish
without struggle.

And then—
without signal or sound—
a gaze catches mine.

Not the echo of interest.
Not the practiced politeness of strangers.

But something older.
Clear.
Unyielding.
True.

They see not the mask,
not the mimicry—
but the quiet beneath it all.

The self I tucked into shadow.

Their eyes do not flinch.
They hold.
They remain.

I shrink,
as I have always done,
into the folds of silence.

But they do not leave.

And something unravels.

To be seen without translation—
to be felt without facade—
is a holy undoing.

It calls the armor to fall away,
leaf by leaf.

It dares me to believe
I am neither too much
nor vanishing.

This is no invitation to rescue—
only to presence.

A witnessing.
A breath held with mine.

And it startles me awake,
like the cold of the Salish Sea
cracking open bone and breath.

There is truth in that cold.

In the way it claims without permission.
In the way light follows—
golden and indifferent,
warming the bridge of my nose
as if to say:

you’re still here.

There is power in that gaze,
not because it saves me—
but because it doesn’t look away.

Not when I flinch.
Not when I soften.
Not when I unravel.

And so I stay.

Grateful,
though not comfortable.

Humbled,
though not broken.

Held,
though I am still learning how.

This is not ease.
But it is real.

And in that realness,
something ancient
begins again.