Resurrecting the Quiet
The coffin was shallow. Not because of cost or carelessness, but because they never meant for her to stay buried. The dirt still tasted like rust as she bit down into it, her teeth gnashing instinctively, reflexively. Her mouth was dry, her breath rancid, but breath was breath. That meant she was alive.
She didn’t remember how long she’d been under—only that silence had become a trusted companion, the kind that didn’t ask questions or offer lies. Her fingers, stiff and broken like dry twigs, clawed upward until they cracked. She didn’t care. Cracking meant they were hers again.
A splinter of moonlight greeted her as her hand breached the soil. She pulled herself free—one groaning bone at a time. Her spine arched back like a bow under tension, then snapped into alignment as she gasped.
Alive.
Again.
Around her, the forest stood as still as a held breath. No welcome. No witnesses. Not yet. But the earth remembered—roots still gripped her like claws, clinging to the memory of her body. She tore free, her chest heaving, her ribs rattling like a cage.
She stumbled forward, not toward a destination but away from what they made her.
Those who buried her had expected silence to do what their poison couldn't. They had whispered their prayers into champagne glasses and toasted her end. But mold bloomed in sweet places, and she was mold now—thriving, inevitable, unkillable.
They had buried her doubts with her, but not her defiance.
Each step peeled back layers of who she used to be. She shed them like old skin—ragged, broken, undeserving of the fire kindling now in her veins. Her hair burned bright as dawn and her scars gleamed like sigils. Her skin shimmered gold where death had kissed it, now stronger than flesh had any right to be.
They would see her again.
They would whisper her name—afraid to say it aloud, but too haunted to forget.
They would know the storm had learned their names, too.
She grinned, wide and wild, bloodied and bold. Not for them. Never for them.
But for the thing inside her. The spark they couldn't drown.
The victory song rising in her chest like a war cry set to a heartbeat.
You can’t kill what won’t stay gone.
And she was done staying gone.