Midnight Cartography...

 

Main Attraction

Midnight Reverie

In the hour when streetlights become constellations,

I trace the map of your spine with fingertips

still sticky with candle wax. The city folds itself

into geometries of shadow and glow.

Cats slink between parked cars, their eyes

liquid amber reflecting all the secrets

we've whispered against pillows. They know

what happens in the spaces between heartbeats.

The weird crawls from beneath dumpsters,

from between bricks, from the gaps

in conversation—that moment when your mouth

opens but nothing emerges except breath.

Remember how we found each other?

Two strangers dissolving in the same darkness,

watching the same moth beat itself senseless

against the same bulb. How familiar your hands felt.

The candle gutters in its pool of memory.

Somewhere, a siren unfurls like ribbon.

The cats are watching us through windows,

their tails writing questions in the air.

This is where we've always been—

caught between concrete and cosmos,

between what we show and what we hide,

mapping each other's bodies by candlelight

while the city sleeps around us,

dreaming its electric dreams,

and all the weird, beautiful darkness

pools like ink between buildings.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this art page for a challenge at Our Midweek Muse.  The theme this week was:  umbrellas.

Image Credits:  Shabby Soda Pop, Rucola Designs

The Forest is Dark But Magic

 

Black Bunnies

Forest Whispers

Between gnarled roots and ancient stones

I wander barefoot on moss-dampened earth

The forest breathes around me—alive, pulsing

Its darkness not an absence but a presence

Luminous fungi glow blue-white among decay

Lighting pathways only the wandering know

A black bunny pauses, obsidian eyes reflecting stars

That haven't yet appeared in the twilight sky

His ears twitch with secrets I'll never understand

My fingers trace bark ridges, skin touching skin

The boundary between self and forest thinning

Like morning mist dissolving into nothing

Magic isn't sparkles or incantations here

But the slow unfurling of fern fronds

The silent communion of roots beneath soil

And the knowing that darkness holds its own kind of light.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this page for a challenge at My Soul's Dark Imagination.  The theme this week is: Black Rabbit.

Image Credits:  Itkupilli

Moon Ephemera

 

Letters to the Moon

The moon hangs pregnant with ancient light tonight, spilling silver across my bare shoulders like a shawl woven from grandmother's stories. I drink it in—this celestial wine, this ethereal nectar that transforms ordinary shadows into messengers from other worlds. How many lovers have whispered secrets beneath her watchful gaze? How many tears has she witnessed, falling like stars into the waiting earth? She pulls at me, this silent sister, tugging at something primal beneath my skin, something that remembers when we were all creatures of darkness and instinct. I have written a thousand letters to her, ink bleeding across paper like tide pools beneath her pull. She never answers, yet always responds—in the rhythms of my body, in the dreams that visit on nights when her face is full and unashamed. To be known so completely, yet remain forever untouched. To illuminate everything while revealing nothing of herself. This is her magic, her terrible beauty—this goddess who wears solitude like a crown, 

who keeps secrets like the ocean keeps shipwrecks—sacred, silent, buried in luminous depths.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this postcard for a challenge at Sunday Postcard Art.  The prompt this week was 'ephemera.'

Image Credits:  Julie Mead, Vicki Stegall, Design Cuts

Just A Girl...

 

Just a Girl with Synthetic Wings

I'm just a girl who loves fake eyelashes,

pinning little deaths to my lids each morning,

these spider-leg prayers, this feminine cage.

Mother never taught me this ritual of lying—

how to bat what God forgot to give me.

The glue burns like small betrayals.

Men watch my eyes now, not knowing

it's the synthetic they're drinking in.

Darling, don't you know? These are the wings

I never grew, plucked from some factory dream.

Each night I peel away the day's deception,

these blackened commas punctuating

the sentence of my face. Tomorrow

I'll resurrect the masquerade again,

because naked eyes are too honest for this world.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this image for a challenge at Digital Whisper.  The theme today was:  eyelashes.

Image Credits:  Pink Lotty, Cryztal Rain

Mother Earth

The Face of Mother Earth

She Who Carries Worlds

In the hollow of her palm, galaxies gather like dew—

ancient memory swimming through veins of river-light.

We are children still, learning the language of soil,

mouths pressed against the wet darkness that births cosmos.

Dreams pool within her, milk-blue and trembling,

prayers caught in the tangles of her forest-hair.

Who among us hasn't felt her breath in midnight gardens?

That sacred pulse beneath bare feet, older than prophecy.

I've wandered the wrinkles of her hands, those valleys

whispering secrets women pass through generations.

Time moves differently inside her body—spiraling,

not linear—past and future dancing in lunar cycles.

Listen: the stones are speaking her first name,

the one hidden beneath mountains, beneath oceanic cathedrals.

We've forgotten how to hear it, though it echoes

in the marrow of all living things, the original heartbeat.

She is not metaphor but mother, not concept but creator—

her consciousness flows through netted roots below us,

holding together what we, in our half-sleep, tear apart,

faithful still to children who've forgotten how to kneel.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this artwork for a challenge at Face Off Friday.

Image Credits:  Image generated by Bing AI, I blurred the image in photoshop and added textures purchased from Design Cuts.

Get Your Ticket!

 

Crimson Paint

In the carnival's heartbeat, I find him—white-faced memory

that unfolds like a night terror beneath fluttering tent canvas.

His laughter peels away at something inside me, something girlish

that once believed in cotton candy promises and carousel eternity.

I watch his hands, pale spiders weaving shadow-puppets

while mothers look away, distracted by the screaming of the rides.

The mirrors remember him differently each time—fractured, multiplied—

his crimson smile bleeding into the spaces between reflections.

How familiar, this feeling—childhood terror wrapped in sugar-sticky fingers,

the way malice can wear a face meant for joy, meant for something holy.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this art page for a challenge at My Soul's Dark Imagination.  The theme this week was Freaky Circus Clowns!

Image Credits:  Graphic Garden, Chillaxin Scraps

Into the Forest I Go...

 

A Moonlit Stroll

The moon spills silver secrets on my skin,

A pale confession, soft as a prayer undone.

I walk where the wild things breathe,

Bare feet kissing the earth’s dark mouth.

The trees lean close—ancient, hungry—

Their branches scratch my name in the sky.

I am no saint, no sinner, just a ghost

Of the girl I buried long ago.

The night hums low in my blood,

A hymn too jagged for daylight’s tongue.

Here, under the moon’s watchful eye,

I peel myself open, petal by petal—

No shame, no shadow heavy enough

To crush the wild heart still beating.

The wind fingers through my hair,

Telling me I was never lost—only waiting.

I taste salt on my lips—my own, my own—

A body rising from ruin like a promise.

The stars blink their distant approval.

I am whole, if only for this moment.

In the dark, I find myself—

Not broken, not clean—just true.

And the moon, patient and pale,

Knows all my names and calls them home.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this art journal page for a challenge at Our Midweek Muse.  The prompt this week was:  Collage a quote or saying.

Image Credits:  Shabby Soda Pop, LouiseL

Let the Sunshine In

 

Let the Sunshine In

Whisper-green shoots breaking through
memories of frost, like tiny revolutions—
the earth's own rebellion against winter's
white-knuckled grip. How quickly we forget
the darkness when sunshine spills like honey
across our wounded skin.

The daffodils nod their yellow heads,
conspirators in Spring's ancient magic,
as if to say I knew we'd survive this too.
Have you noticed how crocus blooms
appear like purple thought-bubbles
from the earth's dreaming mouth?

Somewhere a bee remembers her purpose,
shakes sleep from gossamer wings,
her tiny heart drumming to the rhythm
of pollen and possibility. I want to be that
awake, that alive to my own becoming.

Dandelion clocks whisper secrets to the wind,
their feathered wishes escaping on child-breath—
tiny parachutes of hope floating
toward some unseen horizon.
We were all seeds once, weren't we?
Waiting for the right moment to unfurl.

Rain taps morse code on new leaves,
a language older than memory. Listen—
the trees are stretching their limbs,
reaching skyward like worshippers,
green fingers unfurling to catch
the light they've been dreaming of.

Let the sunshine in.
Let it flood the hollow spaces.
Let it warm the soil of your heart
until forgotten seeds begin to stir,
until what was dormant dances again,
until you too remember how to bloom.

-Stacy Stephens-

I created this art journal layout for a challenge at Try It On Tuesday.  The prompt was:  Spring Fling.

Image Credits:  Cryztal Rain of Mischief Circus (retired)