An Open Mind, Be With Me, Through the Velvet Veil, Lost in Fiction & Five Warnings

Poetry Sofia Ellenor

An Open Mind

Beneath the bone, the mind waits,

a labyrinth of folded silence,

grey corridors lined with memories

pressed into tissue like ink on damp paper.

I trace thought with steel,

split synapse from synapse,

unravelling dreams from their tangled roots,

watching as electric echoes flicker and die.

What is left when the soul is laid bare?

Just circuits, just matter,

no mystery, no magic,

only the hollow architecture of your skull.

Be With Me

Some days, we are effortless—

two rivers meeting,

pouring into something wider than before.

Other days, we are edges,

sharp, unyielding, unsure

of how to fit without breaking.

I trace the way you hesitate before speaking,

the way your fingers tighten in mine

like they are afraid of letting go.

I want to say, I am here.

I want to ask, Are you?

Love is not a place I have memorized,

still, I am willing to get lost in it,

to keep walking even when the path disappears,

to learn you, again and again,

if you are willing to learn me too.

Through the Velvet Veil

I slipped through a crack in the silver-lit night,

Where moonbeams unravel and twinkle just right.

A door in the air, with a handle of lace,

Invited me into a topsy-turv’d place.

The trees wore their whispers like shimmering cloaks,

Their branches reciting the riddles of oaks.

A river of laughter ran backwards in time,

Carrying fish that recited in rhyme.

The sky was a checkerboard, polka-dot blue,

Where rabbits wore waistcoats and sipped honeydew.

A cat with a grin far too wide for its face

Offered directions—though not to a place.

“Up is a spiral, down is a song,

Left leads to right where you don’t quite belong.

Follow the toadstools, but not all the way—

Or you’ll wake up and the dream won’t let you stay.”

The teacups were waltzing, the clocks hummed in tune,

The sun poured its gold in the hands of the moon.

I danced on a tightrope of silk-spun delight,

Till morning crept in with a whispering light.

The world faded softly—a sigh in the mist,

Like pages unturned in a book never kissed.

Yet deep in my pocket, a crumb from the scene—

A petal of nonsense, a piece of the dream.

Lost in Fiction

I wandered too deep where the shadows grew tall,

Past shelves that stood whispering, lined wall to wall.

The air smelled of parchment, of secrets long kept,

And something behind me sighed softly and crept.

I traced the first sentence, the letters unfurled,

Unravelling reason, unspooling my world.

The words slithered up, wrapped tight ‘round my wrists,

A serpent of prose in a plot that persists.

The door slammed behind me—a tome snapped its jaw.

I ran, but the titles could taste my new flaw.

The floor turned to paper, my breath to a phrase,

My fingers to ink as I sank through the maze.

The shelves kept on shifting, the volumes conspired,

The stories, the voices—they hungered, they tired.

They wanted my footsteps, my name in their scroll,

To write me inside them and swallow me whole.

Now I wait in the margins, I fade in the spine,

A footnote, a whisper, a verse lost in time.

If ever you wander where books never burn,

Be careful which stories you dare to unturn.

Five Warnings

The first time, it feels like nothing.

A flick of the wrist, a name carved in salt,

a candle guttering against the dark.

Power hums through your bones,

soft as breath,

gentle as a lie.

The second time, it asks for more.

A drop of blood, a whispered secret,

something stolen from a place

you do not visit in daylight.

The magic knows … It always knows.

By the third time,

your reflection no longer follows you.

The door creaks when you haven’t moved it.

Shadows stretch where no light exists.

The spell works,

yet something else is working, too.

By the fourth, you hear them.

Not voices, not exactly—

just the sound of something shifting

inside the walls of your mind,

counting each time you called it,

measuring what you have left to give.

The fifth time, you understand.

Magic is not a gift.

It is not yours to wield.

It only borrows your hands,

your voice, your flesh.

And when it is done, it does not leave.

Sofia Ellenor is a fourth year Honours English student at the University of Windsor. She enjoys reading fantasy, romance and mystery and is currently reading the Fourth Wing Series. Her poetry has been accepted in Generations (affiliated with the University of Windsor), GentlyMad Poetry Magazine and Pagination Literary Art Zine, which are scheduled to be published in the upcoming months.