The Ghost of Innocence
How the light still leaks through the cracks
There was a time when everything felt simple.
When laughter didn’t carry history. When sleep didn’t mean escape.
Before the world taught us what to fear, or worse—what to expect.
That version of us still lives somewhere.
Not untouched, but unextinguished.
Buried under all the noise.
Still humming in the marrow like a secret we forgot to keep.
Sometimes you can still hear it.
In the clatter of a bike chain.
In the smell of rain on pavement.
In a song like Bloom by The Paper Kites drifting through a quiet room.
For a moment, the air softens. The guard drops.
And the innocence we thought we’d lost steps back into the light—
bare feet, soft eyes, believing that love meant safety,
that the world could be gentle if you just sang to it long enough.
But the world tried to sand that down.
Told us trust was naïve, softness was dangerous, hope was a setup.
So we built armor. Perfect armor. Beautiful even.
And still, the light finds a way through the seams.
There were nights it felt like that softness was gone for good.
Buried under every you’re too much we ever believed.
Every silence that made us think we were right to stop trying.
But then—one small mercy, one unexpected kindness—
and something inside stirs again.
We carry the ruin and the radiance in the same breath.
And it’s holy, watching anyone try to reconcile them.
To hold their brokenness without apologizing for it.
To find beauty in the scar instead of the skin that came before it.
Maybe that’s what survival really is—
not becoming someone new,
but remembering who we were before the world got its hands on us,
and daring to love that person again.
The innocence isn’t gone.
It’s just wearing grown-up clothes now.
And every time we choose kindness when bitterness would be easier,
we let it speak again.
Softly.
Clearly.
Through us.
And somewhere between the verses—
Can I be close to you?—
we realize it’s not waiting to be saved anymore.
It’s the part of us doing the saving.
// Scorpio Veil