suspense

A Quiet Refrain

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Some truths do not shout, they return softly, again and again, until they are heard.”

The season had grown quieter, but silence was never truly empty. It carried a refrain, repeating in unexpected ways, through a name overheard in passing, a story unfolding in a stranger’s voice, a meeting that seemed too precise to be coincidence.

The echoes no longer came from loud gatherings; they rose instead from subtler places. The forest trail, where a branch broke at the exact moment a thought arrived. The phone ringing with news that linked one life to another in ways no one could have planned. The refrain was not a song, it was a persistence, a reminder that some truths will keep circling back until we finally face them.

Every pause seemed to hum with what wasn’t said. In the quiet, the refrain was louder than ever.

Softly it comes, again, again,

a whisper threading through the plain.

No shout, no cry, no storm to send,

just truth repeating without end.

What will not fade returns in kind,

a quiet refrain that bends the mind.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And as the refrain lingered in the air, the question grew, was it just an awareness or an invitation to listen more closely?

The Tide Left Behind

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“What recedes does not vanish, it lingers in the sand, waiting to be found again.”

The tide had pulled back, leaving traces scattered across the shore. A broken shell, a tangled string of weeds, footprints pressed into damp sand, evidence that nothing ever truly disappears. What drifts away always leaves its mark, quiet but undeniable.

In the stillness of the season’s change, the tide seemed to mirror the way life pressed its echoes into unexpected places. A stranger’s story at a shop, a familiar voice on the phone, the uncanny way paths cross where they shouldn’t. Just as the water recedes, only to rise again, the people and moments we think have gone often return, different, altered, yet still carrying the imprint of before.

The tide left behind more than shells and silt. It left questions, reminders, and the uneasy knowing that what has gone out will always, in some way, come back in.

The water retreats, but it does not erase,

it leaves its memory upon the face

of stones and sand, of whispered ground,

where every echo waits to be found.

The tide withdraws with expression

what drifts away, leaves an impression.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And as the tide whispered its return, it was clear, what comes back does not arrive the same.

When the Wild Calls in the Dawn

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Morning carries its own storm, if you rise early enough to hear it.”

The dawn arrived differently now. No boats cut across the cove, no voices spilled into the night. Instead, the wild called in quieter ways, through the rustle of branches, the sudden flight of birds, the faint sound of footsteps where no one was seen. Rising early meant stepping into a world not yet touched by noise, a world that belonged to whispers.

It was here, in the sharp edge of morning air, that the echoes carried differently. Not from parties or crowded lawns, but through chance meetings, phone calls, and unexpected threads that tied lives together. The wild had not left with summer; it had shifted shape. It lingered in the forest paths, in the way names surfaced in conversations, in the way strangers became mirrors of something known.

The dawn had its own wildness, one that could not be seen but only felt, an undercurrent moving through silence, promising that what waits just beyond will always find a way to return.

The dawn does not rise in silence,

it whispers beneath the trees,

breath of shadows bending low,

calling through the leaves.

Wildness wears a softer face,

a chill across the skin,

a whisper where the world begins,

a storm that stirs within.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And as the morning deepened, the call grew sharper, as if the wild was waiting to reveal something hidden in the stillness.

Waiting

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Stillness is never empty, it is a pause before the next unveiling.”

The cove was hushed now. No boats cut across the water, no voices carried into the night. Only the hum of insects and the faint shift of branches filled the air. Waiting had its own weight, heavier than noise, heavier than storms. It pressed against the chest like a truth not yet spoken.

Every step across the lawn, every glance toward the shore felt watched, though no one was there. In waiting, even the air feels alive with questions. It isn’t silence that unsettles, it’s the sense that something is gathering just beyond it.

In waiting, silence leans to hear,

the trace of whispers drawing near.

The air is thick, the night is long,

the heart repeats a muted song.

What’s held at bay will one day break,

and shift the stillness in its wake.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And when the waiting finally ends, will it arrive softly, or split the silence wide open?

After the Eye

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Even calm carries the memory of the storm.”

The storm had passed, or so it seemed. Branches lay scattered across the shoreline, reminders of winds that tore through with little warning. The air was strangely still, too still, as if the cove itself held its breath. In the eye’s quiet aftermath, nothing moved, yet everything remembered.

Neighbors drifted back to their routines, but the silence between them said more than their words. The pause after chaos was never empty; it was full of everything no one dared to name.

After the eye, the silence stays,

broken branches, forgotten days.

Calm deceives, but truth remains,

etched in whispers, etched in veins.

The storm retreats, yet leaves behind,

the weight of echoes, sharp in mind.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And in that stillness, when everyone believed the worst had passed, a single sound rose again, too faint to name, but impossible to ignore.

In Shadows at the Edge

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Shadows lengthen where truths hesitate to speak.”

The shoreline carried a new weight as evening fell. Shadows crept further across the lawn, stretching toward the water as if trying to claim what daylight left behind. Conversations had thinned, but the sense of being overheard remained. Even in the silence, it felt as though someone was always just beyond the edge, listening, waiting, gathering what wasn’t meant to be shared.

At the cove’s edge, the air tightened. The laughter of summer had faded into a cautious quiet, and still the shadows seemed alive, as if they were listening harder than any ear.

At the edge where silence leans,

shadows breathe between the seams.

Every step feels drawn, contained,

by whispers echo cannot name.

What hides in dusk does not relent,

it waits in silence, unbent..

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And just when the quiet seemed steady, a shift stirred in the dark,something more than a shadow, something no one had yet faced.

Circles on the Water

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Every ripple begins in silence, yet carries further than the eye can see.”

The cove had grown quieter, though the memory of voices lingered like the aftertaste of summer. A single splash broke the surface, spreading circles out into the stillness, carrying the night’s echoes further than intended. In the distance, laughter rose and fell, as if carried on the wind from a gathering already dissolving into memory. The water revealed what the voices tried to hide, how quickly joy could ripple into unease, how quickly the world reminded you that nothing was ever just surface.

The circles widened, crossing into one another, colliding, breaking apart, reforming. That is how whispers move. That is how truths travel.

Circles widened, one after another,

meeting in silence where voices falter.

Every echo pressed into the cove,

carrying secrets the night could not hold.

What begins in play does not stay contained,

even still water remembers the sounds.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

But when the next circle broke the surface, it wasn’t laughter that carried with it, it was something else, something no one wanted spoken aloud.

Echoes That Return

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Every sound carries further than we imagine, weaving through silence, returning as echoes that remind us nothing is ever truly gone.

The cove was louder than my thoughts,

laughter bending against the stillness,

pressing its way into my chest.

I wanted to disappear,

to quiet what I could not control.

But vanishing has never healed a wound,

it only hides it deeper.

So I stayed.

I breathed.

I noticed.

The ache was not only mine.

It was the echo of every person

who has stood just outside the circle,

close enough to hear joy

but too far to be held in it.

The world is small,

and what we say travels farther than we know.

Words can cross water,

build bridges,

or set fires.

Today I chose to be still,

to let the echo pass through me

without becoming me.

~Kerri-Elizabeth ~

“When the next echo returns, will it stir the stillness like a storm’s edge, or settle in the silence as a truth softened by time?”

The Cove Within Earshot

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Distance is not always measured in miles, but in truth withheld.”

The sound of joy can be piercing when you stand outside of it. Laughter, music, the hum of boats, and it all carries across the water as if it belonged to me, too. But sound has a way of reminding us of what we are not part of.

It is a strange ache, to be so close and yet so far. A hundred feet. A breath of distance. And yet, it might as well have been a hundred miles. Because distance is never only about space. Sometimes it is about what is withheld, the belonging that is denied, the truth that is hidden, the words that never come.

I noticed how my body responded. My chest tightened, my breath grew shallow, as if the noise itself had weight. For a moment, I wanted to disappear into that pain. To quiet it by numbing it. That impulse startled me, not because it was powerful, but because it was new. The thought that not existing, even just for a while, might feel easier than existing with the ache.

But healing asks something different of us. It asks us to stay. To notice what rises, to feel it in the body, and to choose not to vanish. So I walked. I wrote. I lit candles and let salt water hold me. I chose presence, even when presence hurt. And in choosing presence, I found a kind of strength I did not know I had, the courage to sit with what is unbearable without trying to erase myself.

We all face these moments. Maybe not with sound across the water, but with the reminder of where we are not welcomed, of who has turned away, of what no longer includes us. The details may differ, but the ache is the same. The question is not how to erase it, but how to live through it, and in living through it, discover that we are stronger than the silence that excludes us.

In that, what was found, was a new silence that resonated peace, rather than questions or pain, a resilience that screamed, “I’m here, I’m you”.

~Kerri Elizabeth ~

What do we do when the noise around us becomes louder than the peace within us? Do we disappear into it, or do we rise above it and let it sharpen our awareness instead?

Whispers Beneath the Surface

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“What lies unspoken often cuts the deepest.”

The water looked still, but stillness has a way of deceiving. Beneath the surface, a pulse stirred, faint, almost invisible, but alive enough to send ripples across the silence. It wasn’t the kind of ripple you could see in the reflection of the lake; it was the kind you feel in your skin, in the hairs at the back of your neck, in the quickening of your breath when you realize something is there.

Whispers live in places like this. They hide between the cracks of boards on a dock, in the echoes that hang in the rafters of a room, in the way shadows lean farther than they should when the moon stretches them thin. The whispers don’t announce themselves. They don’t ask permission. They linger, and sometimes they take root.

It’s strange how healing can only begin when you stop pretending the whispers aren’t there. For years, you learn to quiet them, to layer silence over silence until it becomes a wall. But silence never silences the truth; it holds it, and held truth always finds a way out.

Tonight, the hold was loud. The whispers pressed harder against the stillness, and there was no denying them. The body knows long before the mind admits it: something is stirring, and it is not done with you.

It might not even be about destruction. Sometimes the truth presses through because it’s desperate to be freed, not because it wants to tear you down, but because it is seeking freedom.

Still, the not knowing can bring its own emotional adventure.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-


What happens when silence can no longer hold what’s buried? When the surface begins to crack, will truth seep gently through, or erupt in a way no one expected?