When Melancholy and Hope Share the Room
How I work with heaviness and light inside my writing process without letting either one flatten the poem.
My melancholy turmoil, really.
Neurodiversity, in all its spiciness, pulls me in every direction, while burnout and depression flatten the edges in unpredictable cycles. I use tech and AI every day, yet there is a part of me that dreads the future we are building.
As a mother, I cannot just shrug off this unease.
I need answers and direction, something I can believe in.
Writing dystopian fantasy poetry is not the obvious way to sort that out, but somehow it works. I have always been drawn to stories where everything feels lost, yet something small insists on surviving.
This darker thread in my heritage understands long winters and the steady ache of watching horizons for signs of change. Hush Halo grew from that mix. In the beginning, I called the project “I Am Complex,” since I felt this complexity within me and around me. Depth and the layers I work through do not always show in the final poems, but they shape everything.
Creating this fantasy world of Hush Halo has helped me make sense of the real one we are heading toward.
Read or listen to the very first poem: “The First update Felt like a Relief”.
Melancholy as My Baseline
Melancholy is not an artistic choice for me. It is the place I start from, long before I open the editor. It shapes my first draft, my tone, and the rhythm I naturally fall into.
I often begin on the darker side without planning to. Not rough or pop like Bukowski, even though his writing truly inspires me. Mine is a different kind of moody. The melancholy of a mother. A lone-wolf woman who is barely making it day by day while still trying to hold on to a vision of herself, of life, and of the future of her children.
Read about My Why
The seasonal depths of darkness add its own sweet pull toward looking at our horizons, ahead or behind. Burnout and depression bring different kind of depth, tone, savageness, and a certain brutality. I may be fighting a good fight, but I’m tired.
Melancholy sits at the baseline of my creative process. Not as drama or tragedy, but as a quiet undercurrent beneath almost everything I write. I recognize it long before the first line appears.
The emotional climate I bring to the page is entirely home-baked.
The Weird Ways Hope Slips Into My Poetry
Hope shows up in tiny decisions while I write. I am grateful for my neurodiverse traits, the ones that keep my prana moving and bring twists, joy, and light.
These moments of brightness often surprise me more than they surprise the readers. Somehow even the smallest trace of warmth makes the world of Hush Halo feel truer, but not necessarily lighter.
Writing Hush Halo has shifted my perspective from fearing the future to being curious about it. In six months, my point of view has changed. What felt like a true vision of the future at the beginning of Hush Halo now feels like good fantasy.
This shift gives me enough space to breathe and create more freely.
Do Not Polish
To avoid polishing the poem in early stages is a very practical choice. I do not lock a poem into a certain depth or mood, but allow it hold pain and possibility at the same time. My drafts contradict themselves without restrictions. This is the only way to keep the piece alive long enough to find its core.
I love to work in batches, mostly because it’s more convenient. It is easier to stay in one emotional state and let it guide a whole section of work. Often my soundscapes are created in a wildly different mood or situation, generously creating another layer to my dystopia.
I know I cannot return to the exact same tone later, so some poems feel like they come from different families. Like siblings who grew in different emotional climates.
Letting contradictions sit side by side is part of the process. I try not to sand the edges off when I edit.
The poem earns its wings when it is ready, not when I decide it should.
The Collapse and Resilience
I have always been drawn to “all is lost” stories. That spark of survival, that small trace of almost lost personal power and silent stamina forms a powerful core.
The future might hold both collapse and resilience, maybe even in the same breath, at the same time, in the same mind.
Melancholy gives the poem its weight. Hope gives it a pulse. In my writing I try to leave the loose ends hanging on purpose, for you. You, as a reader, should be able to feel the heat of the mess on your own terms.
What about you? How do you feel when you read dystopian poetry or fiction?
Systoics Are the 1%
In the first part of Hush Halo, the contrast between the Systoic ideal world and the remnants of humanity is intentionally sharp. I want you to feel unsettled. To be appalled by the choices made. And at the same time to wonder, maybe uncomfortably, if any of it could be possible.
Would you choose this? Do you know someone who would?
Hush Halo became a way to process that tension. I can see and even name people who consider themselves the 1% and I’m sure you can too. Those who think they are forever entitled and forever capable. In my storyline, Systoics get exactly what they want and deserve. So how would you feel about joining them?
My personal dilemmas with current tech and humane values are at the core of this Realm. My dystopian poems hold space for what I cannot yet resolve, but I try. Poems let the heaviness stay, but they also leave a crack open for light.
You cannot see it yet, but it’s there.
The light, it is always there.
READ MORE about my writing process:
The Strange Freedom of Writing Without the Right Words
There are moments in this project when the words are simply not enough. I sit down to write a scene and I can feel exactly what I’m reaching for, but the vocabulary refuses to show up. It is like standing in front of a thin veil. I know something is on the other side. I can feel its weight and its outline. I just can’t quite see it yet.
What about you? Do you look for the light in dystopia, or do you lean into the darkness? Comment below!
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS
Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.
🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓
This is such a beautiful write up
So profound and impressively impactful you give all the feels a meaning