alessandrapriestessofsacredflame

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“I still wait here on our favorite bench,

its wood smoothed and scarred by the weight of us.

The world rushes by in rain and shadow,

yet I keep listening for the echo of your laughter

a ghost I cannot hold,

a love I cannot bury.”

—Alessandra Di’Stefano

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“There are heartbreaks that don’t shatter you in one violent strike

they undo you slowly, like a thread unraveling from the hem of your soul,

until you no longer recognize the woman staring back in the mirror.

And yet, even undone, I carry the ache as proof I love with a fire no silence could extinguish.”

—Alessandra Di’Stefano

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

The Frame Was Never Enough

I changed the picture in the old frame,

But nothing fits

not paper, not ink,

not even the careful shadows

The photograph tries to keep.

What I want is the sofa,

your body sinking into the cushions,

Your laugh shakes loose the dust of the day.

I want the way your voice

rose and fell like a prayer

You never had to teach me

because I learned it

just by loving you.

Nonna,

They told me time would soften the ache,

But time is a liar.

It sharpens the absence,

etches your silence into every wall.

The more the years go forward,

The more I collapse backward,

reaching for you

hands closing around nothing

but air that remembers your name.

And yet

I carry you,

not in photographs,

but in the curve of my lips

When I laugh too hard,

in the rhythm of my hands

When I cook,

In the stories I whisper

to no one in particular.

The frame is only glass and wood.

But my body

my blood,

my bones

They are your cathedral.

You live in me

like breath,

like pulse,

like an unfinished sentence

that still waits

for your voice.

I don’t want the frame anymore.

I want the sofa,

the warmth,

the you that never fit inside a picture.

I miss you,

in a way that feels less like longing

and more like breathing underwater

a survival I never asked for,

but can’t escape.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

Chapter V: The Ferris Wheel of Forgotten Names

The Carnival groaned awake again, its music-box spine cracking with laughter that wasn’t laughter at all. Tonight, the Ferris Wheel spun—not with iron bolts or rusting chains—but with the weight of names no longer spoken aloud. Each seat carried a ghost. Not the gentle kind, but the heavy kind—the kind that pressed their knees against your chest, the kind that whispered your own secrets back into your ear until you shook.

Up there, high above the midway, the city shrank to ash. The crowd below cheered for someone else’s fall, someone else’s story, never realizing their turn was coming. You gripped the bars. You felt the wheel rising, creaking, dragging you through the ache of everything you tried to bury. Childhood betrayals. Lovers who kissed you like promises but left like thieves. The face of your own reflection when you couldn’t forgive yourself.

The wheel didn’t stop. It climbed. Higher. Higher. The wind tore through your ribs, and still it carried you—until you realized: the ride was never built to let you off.

At the top, you looked down. The carnival glowed like a wound stitched with neon. The crowd looked up at you—eyes wide, hungry. They weren’t clapping for your survival. They were waiting for your slip.

And in that moment, suspended between the heavens and the sawdust earth, you understood: the carnival didn’t feed on blood. It fed on heartbreak. On the silence after your scream. On the crack in your chest that never fully healed.

So you did what the brave and the damned do. You let go. Not to fall—but to rise through the very wheel itself, tearing free of its orbit, refusing to spin again on the machinery of grief.

The crowd gasped. The wheel howled. And somewhere in the shadows, the Ringmaster smiled—because he knew: every rebellion becomes part of the show.

🖋 “Every carnival ends the same: not with applause, but with someone daring to burn the tent down.”

Picture 📌 Pinterest

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

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Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

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[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

Chapter IV: The Lantern of Shattered Voices

The carnival gates moaned like an old wound reopening, and tonight the air reeked of salt and iron, as though even the ocean had come to weep. Lanterns swayed in the midnight wind, each one carrying the faint echo of someone’s confession—half-screamed, half-swallowed. They didn’t shine; they bled light, spilling pale gold in rivulets that stained the cobblestones like old tears.

The ringmaster’s shadow stretched across the midway, long as judgment. He whispered no commands, yet every marionette jerked as though the strings had burrowed into bone. The clowns laughed too loudly, their painted mouths splitting into raw wounds of sound. Lovers clasped hands with desperation instead of devotion, gripping as if skin were rope, as if letting go meant exile.

In the tent of mirrors, reflection became accusation. Every surface fractured your face into too many versions—one smiling, one sobbing, one with teeth clenched against a howl you hadn’t realized you’d been carrying since childhood. People stumbled out, pale and shaking, because the worst truth was this: the carnival didn’t lie. It only unveiled what you already feared.

Somewhere beyond the rides, the calliope wheezed a lullaby that felt like a threat. The horses on the carousel spun with mouths agape, frozen in mid-scream, hooves pounding rhythms that echoed funerals more than festivals.

And in the center ring, a girl with raven-black hair and trembling shoulders stood beneath a single spotlight. Her voice rose—not in song, but in defiance, a shatter that cut the night open.

She was no longer their performer, their pretty puppet of bruises and breath. She had become the lantern herself, swallowing flame, devouring shadow, and casting the kind of light that doesn’t heal—it exposes.

The audience leaned in, unable to turn away, because the rawness of her survival was sharper than any blade.

And the carnival knew it, too. The bruised hearts throbbed in unison, pulled toward her, because for the first time, pain wasn’t spectacle. It was a revolution.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Every carnival ends the same: not with applause, but with someone daring to burn the tent down.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

📖 Chapter III: The Tightrope of Broken Promises

The rope was frayed before I ever set foot on it.

A thin cord stretched across a thousand betrayals,

quivering under the weight of oaths

that had already turned to dust.

They told me balance was survival.

That if I learned to move with grace,

If I smiled wide enough to hide the cracks,

The rope would hold.

But promises rot faster than flesh.

And with every step, I felt them snap—

one by one,

like ribs breaking beneath a silent scream.

The audience leaned forward,

mouths wide,

hungry for collapse.

Applause is never as loud as a body hitting dirt.

They wanted blood disguised as gravity,

devotion dressed as disaster.

I did not fall for them.

I fell for myself

over and over,

catching myself in fragments,

sewing myself back with threads of rage,

with the marrow of a girl

who refused to be a spectacle.

And when the rope finally split,

When the last thread snapped like a neck

between my toes,

I did not plummet.

I taught the sky

How to carry me?

And for the first time,

The carnival fell silent

not from awe,

but from fear.

🖋 “A broken promise is only a rope—too tight, it cuts; too loose, it drops you. But I… I learned to walk it anyway.”

Picture 📌 Pinterest

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

📖 Chapter II: The Ringmaster of Shattered Applause

He did not wear velvet.

He did not wear gold.

The Ringmaster stood in a coat sewn from torn curtains,

red faded to rust,

threads unraveling with every bow.

His whip was not leather,

but silence

the kind that forces children to swallow their laughter

and dancers to pirouette until their ankles bleed.

Crowds adored him.

Crowds always adore the man who teaches them how to clap,

even if his eyes are empty sockets

And his smile is a noose.

The girl with the basket of masks watched him,

and in his shadow, she understood:

Applause is nothing but borrowed thunder,

and thunder dies quickly

Once the lightning forgets your name.

When the Ringmaster raised his hand,

Every broken heart in the carnival trembled.

They mistook fear for awe,

pain for spectacle,

chains for choreography.

But the girl,

the one who carried their discarded faces,

did not clap.

She stared until the Ringmaster flinched,

until he saw the rebellion swelling inside her

not loud, not grand,

but steady,

like a drumbeat under the skin.

And for the first time,

He realized the circus could choke

not on silence,

But on refusal.

🖋 “Even the loudest applause cannot drown the sound of one girl refusing to clap.”

Picture 📌 Pinterest.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

📖 Chapter I: The Girl Who Collected Broken Masks

She arrived not with fanfare,

but with a silence heavy enough to suffocate the lanterns.

Her hands clutched a basket

filled with cracked masks

the kind of lovers wear when they are pretending to stay,

the kind of mothers wear when they are pretending not to cry,

The kind of fathers wear when their pockets are empty

But their voices must still sound strong.

The carnival swallowed her whole.

Every tent leaned closer,

every marionette stilled mid-dance,

Every clown painted her absence across its mouth.

They called her a collector,

But she was only a child with palms torn raw

bleeding not from knives,

but from carrying too many faces that were never hers.

At night,

she laid them out like constellations,

each mask a ruined star,

and whispered to them:

"I know the lies you hide.

I know the ache you paint over."

The masks never spoke back,

but in the silence

She found a truth no carnival could disguise:

that bruised hearts do not vanish

they are worn, traded, broken,

and finally returned to the girl

who remembers every one of them.

🖋 “Every mask cracked the same way—at the mouth, where the truth tries to escape.”

Picture 📌 Pinterest

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

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Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

Prologue: The Carnival Opens

The tent rose from the earth like a wound that refused to close.

Stripes of red and black stitched together with bone-colored thread,

flapping against a wind that smelled of iron and old prayers.

They called it a carnival,

but it was not joy that brought the crowds

it was hunger.

The kind of hunger that gnaws at silence,

that drips between ribs,

that turns love into spectacle.

Inside, the air quivered.

Lanterns burned low,

casting shadows shaped like bruises across the dirt floor.

Every seat was filled with ghosts who clapped louder than the living,

their hands nothing but echoes

slamming against the walls of my chest.

I stood at the threshold,

my own reflection bending in the warped glass of the entrance.

Behind me, the world.

Ahead, the stage

a cathedral of ruin disguised as performance.

The Carnival of Bruised Hearts had begun,

and every act was carved from bone.

Every trick was a betrayal dressed in sequins.

Every performer was a confession

spilled out for strangers to consume.

No one leaves this tent unmarked.

Not the audience.

Not the performers.

Not me.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “The carnival is not entertainment. It is inheritance.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under the U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“The Ringmaster of My Silence"

Alessandra Graziella Di'Stefano

The tent was never quiet.

Even when the crowd hushed,

My chest carried the roar of caged lions,

the crack of whips,

the frantic laughter of clowns

who never learned how to stop bleeding.

And yet they said I was silent.

That I was obedient.

That I was the girl who bowed

while others commanded the stage.

But silence is not absence.

It is power held back,

a whip coiled at the hip,

waiting for the right wrist to claim it.

I learned to tame the circus of my ribs,

to walk among the beasts of memory

and make them kneel.

I cracked my silence against the air,

and the sound split the tent wide open.

The crowd did not cheer.

They trembled

because silence had turned ringmaster,

because the girl they thought was voiceless

had raised her chin

and claimed the center ring.

And once the whip was mine,

I didn’t need applause.

The beasts bowed anyway.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Silence is not weakness—it is a whip waiting for the right hand.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“The Mirror Maze of Almost-Love”

Alessandra Graziella Di'Stefano

They led me in a blindfolded,

hand against glass,

each reflection a body I almost recognized.

My own eyes multiplied into strangers,

my mouth opening in echoes

that never quite belonged to me.

Love is a mirror maze.

It promises depth,

but delivers distortion.

One minute his face was clear,

the next, fractured into prisms,

a dozen mouths swearing devotion,

None of them is real enough to hold.

I chased shadows that shimmered like salvation,

hands stretched for a phantom touch

always close,

always one pane away.

The cruelest trick?

Some of those mirrors showed me not him,

but me

hungry, trembling,

The girl who begged glass to bleed.

And when I struck the wall,

forehead splitting against silver,

The reflections shattered into glittering lies.

It was then that I learned

Sometimes love isn’t absence,

It’s repetition.

The same promise

echoed so many times

You almost believe it’s true.

I stumbled out bleeding,

the carnival spinning behind me,

and realized

the only reflection that had ever been real

was the one who refused to smile back.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Illusion is the cruelest lover—it always disappears in your arms.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“The Marionette’s Revolt” (Deeper Cut)

Alessandra Graziella Di'Stefano

They dressed me in painted smiles,

hinges for wrists,

silken ropes that whispered

grace, obedience, elegance.

Every tug was a sermon.

Every bow a betrayal.

The crowd applauded, not for me,

But for the hand that owned me

their joy at watching a body

move without a soul.

But wood remembers the fire it came from.

So does flesh.

So do I.

I grew teeth inside my silence,

nails inside my restraints.

Every command they pulled through my strings

splintered into rage inside my ribs.

Until one night,

The music broke.

And I did not bend.

I did not spin pretty for their hunger.

I let the strings coil like snakes,

let the stage collapse in ruin.

Do you know the sound of freedom?

It is not applause.

It is the scream of a puppet

finally finding her voice.

It is the whip of silk snapping in the dark.

It is the crowd gasping,

not because they love you,

But because they fear you now.

I ripped the hinges from my joints,

staggered crooked,

learned to bleed standing.

And when the spotlight cracked,

I smiled—not the painted grin they carved for me,

But the feral curve of a woman who knows

She is no one’s creation but her own.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Strings are not guidance. They are prisons. Cut them, and you may bleed—but you will also live.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“The Tightrope of Broken Promises”

Alessandra Graziella Di'Stefano

They said it was balanced.

But no one spoke of the rope’s teeth,

How it bit into the skin

with every tremor of trust.

I was fourteen again

Papa’s princess, Mama’s little ballerina

taught that grace meant silence,

that even when the blood filled my shoes

I must keep dancing.

And so I did.

The crowd wanted to collapse.

Eyes wide, mouths ready

to drink the spectacle of ruin.

But I didn’t fall for them.

I fell for myself

a thousand times

and stitched myself back

with threads of defiance,

with the marrow of my own hunger.

Promises fray.

Love rots.

Even faith splinters under its own weight.

But I…

I walk barefoot anyway,

carrying the ghost of every vow

That never held me.

And if the rope snaps tonight,

let it.

The moon will catch me,

And I will teach the sky

How to kneel.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Some promises are nooses. Mine became wings.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

“The Tightrope of Broken Promises”

Alessandra Graziella Di'Stefano

They said it was balanced.

But no one spoke of the rope’s teeth,

How it bit into the skin

with every tremor of trust.

I was fourteen again

Papa’s princess, Mama’s little ballerina

taught that grace meant silence,

that even when the blood filled my shoes

I must keep dancing.

And so I did.

The crowd wanted to collapse.

Eyes wide, mouths ready

to drink the spectacle of ruin.

But I didn’t fall for them.

I fell for myself

a thousand times

and stitched myself back

with threads of defiance,

with the marrow of my own hunger.

Promises fray.

Love rots.

Even faith splinters under its own weight.

But I…

I walk barefoot anyway,

carrying the ghost of every vow

That never held me.

And if the rope snaps tonight,

let it.

The moon will catch me,

And I will teach the sky

How to kneel.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

🖋 “Some promises are nooses. Mine became wings.”

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

Her Mouth Was a Guillotine

Her lips were velvet

But velvet lined with razors.

Men mistook them for softness,

But softness was the bait,

and they were too eager to lean in,

to worship at the altar of her kiss.

They never saw the blade,

gleaming sharp in the red hush,

until devotion turned to execution.

Every word she spoke

fell with the precision of steel,

beheading their tender illusions.

Her whispers severed,

her laughter condemned,

and still

They begged for more.

Because desire is crueler than truth.

It teaches you to ache for the hand

that slices you open.

It makes you kneel

for the mouth that ruins you.

And she, the executioner cloaked as lover,

wore their severed hopes

like pearls around her neck.

🖋 Some mouths don’t speak—they sever.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

The Lanterns Burned Blue Tonight

Lanterns hung like suspended grief,

their light a bruised shade of sorrow

not gold, not red, but blue.

The color of unfinished prayers,

of oceans swallowing secrets whole.

I walked that alley,

lined with the shadows of those who once had names,

their echoes folded into the cobblestones,

Their laughter was trapped between bricks like forgotten smoke.

The blue flames hissed,

pressing their glow against my skin

like an old scar remembering its fire.

Every flicker whispered stay,

every ember begged to kneel,

But the smoke dragged me deeper,

into the hollow where the living

and the unliving blur into one endless ache.

And I realized then

that even fire mourns,

And not all flames burn to destroy.

Some just burn to remind you

that not everything is finished,

even when it looks like it is.

🖋 Even fire mourns in colors no one dares to name.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

Picture 📌 Pinterest

[alessandrapriestessofsacredflame]

Elegy for the Girl Who Bit Her Tongue

She was born with words curled sharp as glass,

But no one told her she was allowed to let them fly.

So she swallowed them whole,

each syllable slicing her throat raw

as it slid into the graveyard of her chest.

Her mouth learned silence like religion,

a temple for unsaid things

her tongue gnawed nightly by secrets,

her lips lacquered with the metallic taste of restraint.

Every time she wanted to scream,

she bit harder, harder still,

until the blood shimmered like lipstick.

And when they told her how elegant she looked,

She bowed her head in shame,

because elegance is just mutilation

polished for someone else’s comfort.

Still, if you press your ear to her silence,

You’ll hear it

a choir of words never spoken,

chanting the hymns of a girl who wanted to burn,

but was taught only to smolder.

🖋 Sometimes silence is louder than confession.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di’Stefano. All rights reserved.

All works are registered and protected under U.S. Copyright Law.

Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited and subject to legal action.

Stealing or claiming this work as your own may result in fines, damages, and removal from any platform.

Picture 📌 Pinterest