A poem for Taissa

She learned early

that fear is a weakness

you outrun.

Knees pumping through suburban streets,

heart steady,

mouth set in a line that said

“I will not break”

Taissa Turner does not believe in ghosts.

She believes in grades,

in scholarships,

in the clean geometry of victory.

She believes in becoming untouchable.

But the wilderness

does not care what you believe.

It splits her open

like bark under frost.

By day, she is discipline;

sharp jaw, sharper plans,

the girl who maps escape routes

while everyone else prays.

By night,

she is teeth.

Dirt packed under her fingernails.

Sleepwalking through pine shadows.

Breathing something older than language.

Something that hums

when the trees lean in closer.

There are two of her.

One who kisses Van

like it’s a promise.

And the other

who leaves the cabin at midnight,

who follows symbols carved into trees,

who kneels at an altar no one admits building.

Van sees both.

That’s the problem.

Van, with her split-open face

and stubborn, sly grin.

Van, who survives fire

and calls it fate.

Van, who looks at Taissa

like she’s both miracle

and omen.

Love in the wilderness

is not gentle.

It is clutching someone’s wrist

as wolves circle.

It is whispering I’m here

while something inside you

answers back,

“but I’m not”

Taissa builds a life after—

law degrees and lawn signs,

a wife, a child,

a house that smells like lemon cleaner

instead of blood.

She runs for office

because power feels safer

than prayer.

She tells herself

the other one is gone.

But you cannot starve

what learned to feed in the dark.

It waits

in reflections.

In cracked mirrors.

In the quiet stretch

between sleep and waking.

It waits

for dirt.

For bone.

For the taste of something sacrificed.

Taissa Turner does not believe in ghosts.

But sometimes she wakes

with her mouth full of earth

and Van’s name

caught between her teeth

like something she almost swallowed whole.