Nightfall Unfurling

A song of bone and brine

Ani Eldritch
The Lark
2 min readJan 11, 2025

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This artwork is a geometric, abstract depiction of a sunset over water, using bold, layered colors and sharp lines. A large, red-orange sun with a diagonal shadow hovers over a stylized sea composed of flowing, multicolored bands in blues, purples, oranges, and reds. Black and white grid-like lines add a structured contrast. The image is framed in beige, evoking a retro-futuristic aesthetic.
Artwork created by the author using ChatGPT.

The sea licks the rocks like a mother crooning, her salt tongue soft on the bones of the world, and I brined and bared to the wind’s hunger, stand where the tide gnaws the earth to chalk. The gulls carve their sharp cries into the dusk, stitching the wind with the bright thread of their voices. My hair whips like eelgrass, tasting the storm before it comes.

Oh, I was a child once, a girl with blood hot as foxgloves, running through fields where the wheat sighed secrets to the wind. My mother’s hands, sea-worn and dark, pressed dough into bread and worry into my skin, teaching me the weight of wanting. She said a woman is a house of echoes, a song trapped in the mouth of a cave.

I have kissed the wrong mouths, swallowed the night like wine, felt the shore’s shudder in my bones when a man pressed too hard against me. The world is full of hands that do not know their own strength, of doors that do not open, of women who turn to wind and vanish. I have walked barefoot through the dark and left no footprints.

Now the tide calls my name with a voice like my grandmother’s, low and certain, pulling at the sinew of my spirit. The moon spills its silver hands over the waves, and I, untethered, step into the hush of the deep. The water closes over me like a mother, like a hymn, like the beginning of something holy.

© Ani Eldritch, 2025.

Thanks to Denise Larkin, BA (Hons) at The Lark, for hosting my work.

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The Lark
The Lark

Published in The Lark

The Lark Publication shares fictional short stories and poetry

Ani Eldritch
Ani Eldritch

Written by Ani Eldritch

I’m a writer and poet from NYC.

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