When the Walls Come Down
Written By Selah Risingsun
“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.
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.
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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.
