CURIOSITY
- Dark Poets Club
- Jan 30
- 1 min read
By Tim Reaper
She was small enough
to still believe the world was made for touching—
hot stove, sharp shell,
the bright rule of what happens if.
He was smaller,
milk-breathed,
a soft new noise in the house
that stole the room’s attention
the way flame steals air.
The bathwater waited,
perfectly still,
a dark mirror with no opinion.
It held the ceiling light
like a trapped star
and she thought: How deep does a star go?
No anger.
No storybook monster.
Just the clean, blank wonder
that opens cupboards,
pulls wings from insects,
presses bruises to see if they change colour.
The house continued being a house—
pipes ticking,
a kettle thinking about boiling,
the clock repeating itself
with polite confidence.
Afterwards,
she sat on the cold tiles
and listened to the quiet
where crying should have been,
as if silence was simply another experiment
that had worked.
And when footsteps came running,
she looked up
with those wide eyes
that had not yet learned
the shape of unforgivable—
only the ache of something missing,
and the terror of not knowing
how to put it back.