The anglerfish that chose light over darkness — sciopoetica

She carried a glow that wasn’t borrowed, something quiet yet unshaken, pulsing in the depths of her being.

It was not the kind that fought against the dark but the kind that made peace with it, that made it feel like home.

She did not chase the sun. She did not need to. It was already within her—in the breath she took, in the silence she had learned to wear like armor.

But one day, she let herself rise, let her eyes meet the light people worshipped—the sun they swore was life itself.

And for a moment, she understood. The warmth traced her skin like a hesitant promise, the air pressed into her lungs, thin and fleeting.

It was nothing like the world she had known, but it welcomed her all the same. Then she felt it—her body loosening, the weight of existence slipping from her bones.

The light did not embrace her; it unmade her. And in that letting go, she felt something she never had before—relief.

Death was not cruel. It did not press, did not demand. It was softer than the weight she had carried, kinder than the life spent under an ocean of silence and pressure.

For the first time, she saw its beauty—not as an ending, but as something gentler than the world she was leaving behind.

I wasn’t a terrifying monster—until life pressed me into its darkness and made me one. Perhaps that’s how the universe shapes its creations—under pressure, in silence, through forces unseen.

— Sadia Hakim

I am that anglerfish. What I thought was embracing and welcoming me was actually unmaking me, yet I still chose that light over the darkness I had hidden inside.

I think death is softer than life—maybe things like that always come with a cost, and in this case, it was life itself.

Some chase the light to be saved; others embrace it knowing it will destroy them. Not all endings are tragedies—some are simply the cost of knowing.

It’s about the choices we make between comfort and change, between surviving and truly experiencing something—even if it undoes us.

— Sadia Hakim //  The cry of a small deep-sea anglerfish.

Read more of my science-infused poetry here.