Behind My Eye: A Spell for the Half-Light
I have never truly spoken about what it’s like to be legally blind. Maybe because language feels too small to carry it. It’s not just about sight; it’s about initiation. One day, you wake up inside a dimming world, and it feels like being sealed in a dark room where the walls breathe and the light switch refuses to exist. You wait for the return of what was lost, until you realize-
the darkness isn’t punishment.
It’s a portal.
By Selahmon Risingsun Photography by Matias Mango
Image by Matias Mango
I have never truly spoken about what it’s like to be legally blind. Maybe because language feels too small to carry it. It’s not just about sight; it’s about initiation. One day, you wake up inside a dimming world, and it feels like being sealed in a dark room where the walls breathe and the light switch refuses to exist. You wait for the return of what was lost, until you realize—
the darkness isn’t punishment.
It’s a portal.
Behind my eye, there is a hidden universe. A place where light folds in on itself like silk. It’s a kind of velvet void, ancient and sentient. It hums with the songs of all things unseen. I used to think half of me had gone missing—but no, half of me simply went elsewhere. That part of me began listening instead of looking. Feeling instead of chasing. Knowing instead of seeing.
They call it blindness. I call it witchcraft.
Because now I can sense storms before they gather. I can feel people’s truths crawling beneath their skin before they speak. My intuition sharpened into blade and balm. My one good eye stares into this world, while the other gazes into the one beneath it. Together, they make me whole.
I don’t talk about my vision much, not out of shame but devotion. This eye is my familiar, my oracle. It sees without needing to see. It reads the room, the wind, the pulse of the air. I’ve stopped wishing for symmetry. Perfection is dull; perception is divine.
People tell me my eyes look like the sky arguing with itself—one dusk, one dawn. Sometimes they say it feels like falling into a galaxy. Maybe that’s what I am now: a galaxy rearranged.
There’s a strange sensuality in half-light, a soft ache that glows where sight ends and spirit begins. I’ve made a home there. I’ve learned that beauty isn’t in what we see, but in how we sense.
So when they ask, “How does it feel to lose vision?”
I tell them:
I didn’t lose.
I transmuted.
Behind my eye lies the night, the whisper, the knowing.
And when I close the other, I see everything.
Lesson: The Power of Partial Light
Disability is not a deficit—it’s a different kind of doorway.
We live in a world that worships symmetry, speed, and sameness, but those who move differently—who see differently—carry sacred sight. They remind us that wholeness has never meant perfection.
When you lose one sense, the others rise like ancient guardians.
When one path closes, another—often quieter, wiser, more luminous—opens.
The lesson is this: we must stop romanticizing “normal” and start revering variation.
The body is not broken just because it bends a different way.
The mind is not lesser because it perceives through shadow.
And blindness—whether of the eye or the heart—can become its own teacher if you let it.
Those of us who live with visible or invisible differences are not asking for pity.
We are asking for presence.
To be seen not as lacking, but as luminous in a different frequency.
Because every so-called limitation can become an instrument of intuition, creativity, and divine perspective.
Behind every altered sense is a portal to deeper knowing.
Behind every scar, a star waiting to be recognized.
When Love Demands Too Much: The Grief I Buried Beneath His
What happens when you’re left to grieve not only the person,
but the weight of carrying everything they could not?
Today began in light, but it ended in shadow.
Facebook — that tireless archivist of memory — unearthed ghosts I had tried to lay to rest.
A photograph of him appeared, then a reminder of his late mother.
Her words to me surfaced, like spirits rising through water.
By Selahmon Risingsun Photography by RDNE Stock project
What happens when you’re left to grieve not only the person,
but the weight of carrying everything they could not?
Today began in light, but it ended in shadow.
Facebook — that tireless archivist of memory — unearthed ghosts I had tried to lay to rest.
A photograph of him appeared, then a reminder of his late mother.
Her words to me surfaced, like spirits rising through water.
She was not just his mother.
She became my confidante,
my witness,
my sacred ally when the nights grew long.
I leaned on her when addiction was the third body in our bed.
I poured my questions into her inbox like prayers:
How do I hold him together?
How do I keep us from breaking?
But clarity comes with distance.
Now I see:
I was the one holding us up.
I was the one arranging therapy,
chasing AA meetings,
dragging us both toward a healing he never tried to hold.
I was the altar,
the offering,
the sacrifice.
And when she died,
I carried his grief too.
Mine was silenced.
My tears belonged to him.
My strength was spent outward,
never inward.
I dissolved.
I disappeared.
I drowned in silence.
Years later, the storm came.
Tears, long overdue,
wept not just for her,
but for myself.
Because back then, I was too busy bracing his body
to let my own shake.
Too busy smothering my sorrow
so his could breathe.
It is a bitter revelation:
while I was fighting to be strong for him,
he never once tried to be strong for me.
This is not condemnation.
It is testimony.
Addiction is a merciless captor.
Grief is an unforgiving guest.
But love — true love — cannot survive when it rests on only one back.
Grief, buried, will always seep back through the cracks.
And healing cannot be outsourced.
I write this for the ones drowning quietly in someone else’s ocean.
For those mistaking endurance for intimacy.
For those confusing sacrifice for love.
Here is what I’ve learned:
When you do all the work,
you do not save the relationship.
You only lose yourself.
And sometimes the most sacred act of love
is not in holding on,
but in finally letting go.
---
Lesson
Love is not martyrdom.
It is not meant to consume you,
to drain you,
to hollow you out.
If you find yourself carrying both your grief and theirs,
know this: you are not failing.
You are awakening.
True love requires two hands, two hearts, two souls rising.
And when only one is willing,
the holiest act is release.
When the Walls Come Down
There is a strange magic in the moment before collapse.
Everyone else runs when the old towers begin to sway.
But some of us — the ones with ash on our hands and fire in our veins — stay.
We do not run from the dust; we inhale it. We let it mark us.
We hold up our hands like lanterns, we press record, we take pictures. We witness.
Written By Selah Risingsun Photography by Julia Malushko
There is a strange magic in the moment before collapse.
Everyone else runs when the old towers begin to sway.
But some of us — the ones with ash on our hands and fire in our veins — stay.
We do not run from the dust; we inhale it. We let it mark us.
We hold up our hands like lanterns, we press record, we take pictures. We witness.
For years, I built my life as if it were a fortress, stone upon stone, secret upon secret.
Family, lovers, silence, ritual — stacked too high to see the ground.
And then, without warning, the beams gave way.
No earthquake. No fire.
Just the inevitable undoing of something that had forgotten how to breathe.
I thought I would be afraid.
I thought I would scatter like birds at the crack of thunder.
But something older, something sparse and guiding, whispered: Stay.
Stay in the ruins. Stay in the smoke. Stay and see.
So I stripped myself bare,
casting off layer after layer like serpent-skin.
A demolition I did not cause but could no longer resist.
I walked into the wreckage with my own two hands,
taking pictures — not for nostalgia, but for proof.
Proof that death and rebirth can be twin flames.
Proof that the ground beneath the ashes still belonged to me.
By the time the dust settled,
I had seen what most are too fearful to see:
the skeleton of the old and the quick pulse of the new,
rising out of the same soil,
rebuilt faster than grief,
taller than sorrow,
a temple where a tomb once stood.
---
Lesson in the Dust
To every woman who feels her own walls trembling:
your body will always whisper first.
A knot in the stomach, a tightening of breath, a dream you cannot shake.
Listen. That is the spell. That is the warning.
Do not fear the collapse.
Do not run from the falling bricks of your old self.
Stand in the dust.
Breathe it in like incense.
You are not only the one being undone —
you are the witch, the witness, and the builder of what comes next.
Demolition is never the end.
It is the clearing for your awakening.
The Circle Returns
Written by Selahmon Risingsun Photo by hello aesthe
I tried to run from the roots.
Tried to outrun the ghosts of my bloodline.
Four years of silence carved between me and my father,
a silence born of wounds,
boundaries,
and the kind of pain you tuck away like knives under the bed.
I swore I’d never come back.
But circles are sacred.
And life is a circle.
Here I am.
Not because I lost—
but because the circle called me home.
The girl I was once trembled in shadows,
but the woman I am now stands in firelight.
Her eyes are not the same.
Her bones have been baptized in storms.
She knows that return is not regression.
Return is resurrection.
We try to break from our family’s threads,
but threads become roots,
and roots always remember.
The stillness of this moment says:
stop fighting.
Look again.
See what has grown in the ruins.
The past has claws, yes.
But I do not bleed for it anymore.
The grudge is a chain.
And I am not meant to be bound.
So I forgive—
not to erase,
but to exhale.
I release—
not to excuse,
but to live.
This is the alchemy:
to turn bitterness into breath,
to turn history into healing,
to turn a wound into a window.
Full circle is not a prison.
It is a spell.
It is medicine.
It is where I remember that roots are not cages.
Roots are where the magic begins.
Lesson
Return is not defeat; it’s initiation.
Look with new eyes.
Let forgiveness free you and boundaries keep you whole.
Judge the now, not the story then—are they repairing, am I growing?
If yes: root and rise.
If no: bless and go.
Either way, I become.
"The Truth About Empaths No One Talks About (From Empath Diaries)
The strongest and most talented empaths, on the contrary, grew up in narcissistic families where they were underestimated, their abilities devalued, where they were not heard, silenced and where no one understood them.
Article written by © yourrrr_soul Photo by Hasnain Babar
Article written by © yourrrr_soul Photo by Hasnain Babar
"...many people think that an empath is a person who has grown up in love, harmony and understanding and therefore can feel everything.
That’s not exactly true.
The strongest and most talented empaths, on the contrary, grew up in narcissistic families where they were underestimated, their abilities devalued, where they were not heard, silenced and where no one understood them.
They grew up in families where emotions were punished and where emotions were considered shameful and where it was customary to hide them.
These children smiled in the company and cried at home, but no one paid attention to it.
The strongest and most talented empaths grew up behind a narcissistic facade with parents who did not know how to love and often thought that love was control."
Empath Diaries ©yourrrr_soul
If this is you you should to remember:
you’re not “too emotional.”
You’re not “too much.”
You’re a miracle of resilience.
Affirmations for the Empath Who Is Reclaiming Their Power
I honor my emotions — they are my guidance system.
My sensitivity is not a weakness; it is my superpower.
I release the shame that was never mine to carry.
I am safe to feel, safe to speak, safe to exist fully.
I choose people who respect my heart, not silence it.
My intuition is sacred, sharp, and always right.
I am not who hurt me — I am who I became despite it.
It depends on us how our children’s lives turn out and it is not the children’s fault that their parents are cold.
When you are an empath who grew up behind the narcissistic facade you don’t get mad at your parents.
Children love their parents for what they gave them life.
You draw the main lesson in your life - a lesson on self-worth.
You will never prove your worth to anyone ever again.
And you also know exactly what parent you will never be for your child.
Oleksandra Fomichova (yourrrr_soul) is a Ukrainian writer and the author of the memoir “Under My Skin.” Her work explores twin-flame connections, healing from narcissistic trauma, and the alchemy of self-love through pain, irony, and spiritual awakening.
Instagram: @yourrrr_soul
Website: https://q170810.wixsite.com/under-my-skin-twin-f
When You’re a Girl on a Twin Flame Journey
“Twin flames aren’t just a fairy tale. For a girl on this journey, pain is real, invisible battles are constant, and the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself.”
Self-love is the magic that heals the deepest wounds.
Do You Know What It Means to Be a Girl on a Twin Flame Journey?
By Oleksandra Fomichova
Pen name: yourrrr_soul
Instagram: @yourrrr_soul
Originally published on Medium: Read the original article
“Twin flames aren’t just a fairy tale. For a girl on this journey, pain is real, invisible battles are constant, and the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself.”
Self-love is the magic that heals the deepest wounds.
Do You Know What It Means to Be a Girl on a Twin Flame Journey?
You may have heard about twin flames, and maybe you’ve been told it’s just a beautiful fairy tale. Many people don’t believe they exist because twin flames are so rare. But rare doesn’t mean unreal.
Twin flames are real, and the greatest proof of their existence is the endless pain you carry for years, a pain that never fades away.
So what does it mean to be a girl on a twin flame journey?
It means being a constant target and a trigger.
It means nobody around you believes you, and worse, you feel invisible because the world keeps trying to convince you that you don’t exist or that you’re just a joke.
Crazy? Exactly.
Time goes on, and slowly, a girl’s heart almost stops beating. Yet she doesn’t stop loving. She doesn’t stop feeling. In fact, she begins to love and feel even more deeply. And then she realizes the truth: love must begin with herself.
That’s when the magic happens.
Her wounded heart begins to shine.
The Awakening Within
The twin flame journey proves one thing: self-love heals even the deepest wounds. Love can heal the world, but it has to start with you. Because if every person truly loved and valued themselves, there wouldn’t be a single unhappy soul left on earth.
And maybe, we go through this pain only to finally understand that.
This reflection is inspired by my memoir Under My Skin, a raw, ironic, and spiritual story about twin flames, pain, and transformation.
Editorial Reflection
For readers of Bruja Magazine, Oleksandra’s story is both medicine and mirror, a reminder that the alchemy of love begins with truth. The New Moon in Scorpio is a portal of emotional depth and shadow work, making this the perfect lunar window to release her words back into the world. The Waxing Crescent in Sagittarius, just days later, will carry that truth outward, expansive, daring, and bright.
Let this story reach the hearts that need it most, those learning that self-love is not a luxury but a lifeline.
I Picked Him Up Today…
I picked him up today. I didn’t think it would hit me so hard. The drive there felt ordinary: red lights, traffic, even passing his old apartment. It was more sad than gut-wrenching. But when I pulled in, I froze. I couldn’t go inside. I didn’t want to see the tchotchkes. I didn’t want to see the cards. And I absolutely didn’t want him in my car. Not because I didn’t want to be with him, but because I did.
Written by Leah Hannon
I picked him up today. I didn’t think it would hit me so hard. The drive there felt ordinary: red lights, traffic, even passing his old apartment. It was more sad than gut-wrenching. But when I pulled in, I froze. I couldn’t go inside. I didn’t want to see the tchotchkes. I didn’t want to see the cards. And I absolutely didn’t want him in my car. Not because I didn’t want to be with him, but because I did.
Still, I did what I had to do. I went inside. The woman at the desk asked for my ID. Confused, I asked why. “So the right person goes home with you,” she said. Fair enough. I signed the papers, gathered his things, and a kind man helped me carry him to the car. I buckled him into the front seat. No sense putting him in the back. By then the tears blurred the windshield.
My kid had suggested going through a drive-thru since he was coming home with me. You know what? That was brilliant. I got a Coke and some fries. He loved Coke. And fries—well, potatoes in any form. It felt like the perfect tribute. I managed to hold it together until I got home, because it is hard to drive when you’re crying.
Once I got him home, I settled him in the spare room. I looked around and thought about how we would eventually have to make it usable. But that was a problem for another day. I sat down at my computer, and that’s when my heart cracked open.
I sobbed for our dads, for what they had lost. Then I smiled for what they had gained. I thought about their kids and grandkids, how proud they were of them. I even felt a small, guilty relief—no more trips to that Walgreens where everyone seemed dumber than a box of hammers. The thought made me laugh through my tears. I remembered their stubbornness, Irish and German tempers shaking fists at the people they loved most. I chuckled at all their antics over the years. But mostly, I felt the warmth of knowing how much they loved me, my man, and my kid. How special we were to them. How much we still mean. Always.
I cried again for what we had all lost—for their families, for their friends, both now and twenty years ago. And I smiled once more, imagining them together, raising hell and probably instigating half of it.
I picked him up today. And it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
Image courtesy Leah Hannon
‘Mercy’ by Stephanie Alvarez
Stephanie Alvarez is a poet whose work dwells in the borderlands of grief, transformation, and desire. Her writing does not shy away from darkness—instead, it inhabits it fully, letting readers witness how pain splinters and reshapes the soul. What sets her apart is the way she threads resilience through despair, allowing even the heaviest words to carry a strange and haunting beauty.
Written by Epi Arriagada. Photography and Narration by Stephanie Alvarez. Visuals by Epi Arriagada
Artist Feature: Stephanie Alvarez
Stephanie Alvarez is a poet whose work dwells in the borderlands of grief, transformation, and desire. Her writing does not shy away from darkness—instead, it inhabits it fully, letting readers witness how pain splinters and reshapes the soul. What sets her apart is the way she threads resilience through despair, allowing even the heaviest words to carry a strange and haunting beauty.
Her poetry feels like a mirror to the body’s inner weather: frozen stillness, sudden fire, and finally, the soft possibility of awakening. Each piece offers a visceral reminder that brokenness does not end the story—it becomes the very material from which new worlds are formed.
Image credit: Stephanie Alvarez
Mercy
Only, lonely, lovely,
Hello.
Once upon a time became
30 below.
Hearts touched by Death’s cool kiss
Lay quietly still in
Hypnotically cruel bliss.
A deliberately coy trist
And a motion of the wrist,
All breaks down to this -
Loving, Unloving, Fateful,
Unfaithful, Missed.
Miscommunication plus
Misinterpretation
Equal grief stricken
Heartache times three.
Then comes the thaw.
Tiny winding splinters through veins
Inescapable pain
Inexplicably remains.
Climbing high and dropping low.
Rapidly, fire builds in the depths and rages,
Races,
Screaming towards the top.
Towards light and open air
And once it is there
It meets a flame.
No name, no hope.
No pain that any ear can hear.
Only lonely and lovely.
Hold me.
Hello, sweet Mercy.
Mercy is a portrait of heartbreak in motion, unfolding through images of freeze, fracture, fire, and fragile surrender. Alvarez begins with repetition—“Only, lonely, lovely”—a chant that frames the entire poem. These three words don’t just describe emotion; they create a rhythm, a pulse of contradiction where isolation and beauty exist in the same breath.
The first half of the poem carries the weight of disconnection. Relationships collapse into miscommunication and misinterpretation, and love is reduced to arithmetic: “Equal grief stricken / Heartache times three.” Her use of numbers to measure pain shows how heartbreak defies language—reduced to cold calculation when words themselves fail.
Then the thaw comes, and the poem changes shape. Pain is no longer silent; it moves like splinters in the veins, building into a fire that cannot be contained. Alvarez captures the body of grief—how it climbs, drops, rages, and races toward release. This physicality is what makes the poem visceral: it doesn’t describe pain from afar, it inhabits it.
Yet even the eruption offers no easy resolution. The flame that greets the reader at the peak is nameless, hopeless, and unheard. It is both climax and void, the raw space where suffering becomes too vast for expression.
Still, the closing refrain circles back: “Only lonely and lovely. / Hold me. / Hello, sweet Mercy.” The poem does not offer resolution in the traditional sense, but what it does offer is invocation. Mercy becomes the whispered presence that grief calls to—not the erasure of pain, but the grace to live with it.
Visual Interpretation
The video extends this cycle without explaining it: stillness in nature, the body at rest, a hand at the cold window, fire breaking through, and an awakening into a dreamlike world. These images move with the poem rather than define it, creating another way of entering its rhythm—quiet, eruptive, and searching.
The Petal’s Guidance
Kat Robinson is a writer, photographer, and model based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Her writing explores the quiet resilience of nature, feminine transformation, and the art of blooming through adversity. Whether behind the lens or on the page, she captures the beauty of becoming.
photo by KBRofficial
Artist Feature: Kat Robinson
“Poetry has been something dear to my heart from a young age. Every time I was dealing with a low point in my life, I turned to writing poetry. It wasn't until high school when I started sharing a bit of my work. Since then, I have worked on refining my writing and making poetry that makes people feel things. I hope these pieces resonate with you, and inspire you to make your own art.”
— Kat Robinson
Kat Robinson is a writer, photographer, and model based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Her work explores the quiet resilience of nature, feminine transformation, and the art of blooming through adversity. Whether behind the lens or on the page, she captures the beauty of becoming.
Her story is one of struggle and renewal. Through her creative practice, she has taken life’s lowest moments and transmuted them into art that is not only palpable but healing. You can see this journey of overcoming most clearly in her poetry, which carries the imprint of both shadow and light.
‘The Petal’s Guidance’
I let the flowers guide my soul
The perennials have always taken my breath away
For even though they wilt, they are still beautiful
May all the flowers continue to influence my heart
I cherish the lesson I’ve learned from the flora
Should your petals begin to fall
Prevail the storms and bloom again
Robinson’s poem radiates the quiet wisdom of nature as a teacher. She draws from the perennial cycle—bloom, wilt, and return—to mirror the human journey through hardship and recovery. What is striking is her framing of beauty not only in the blossoming but also in the wilting; she reminds us that imperfection and decline are part of what makes life sacred.
The language is gentle but directive: “I let the flowers guide my soul” suggests surrender to nature’s rhythm, while the closing lines shift into encouragement, almost like an invocation for resilience—“Prevail the storms and bloom again.” In doing so, Robinson redefines resilience not as resistance, but as an acceptance of cycles, trusting that renewal always follows loss.