DISCLAIMER

Most of my poetry is hella personal and it feels weird to have it on display, but I also hate keeping it to myself because 1. it feels like there's no payoff, and 2. I want to feel free to be genuine. So, I'm finding a middle ground with it by just giving you this preface. I've been in therapy for a very long time so a lot of what I say is just retrospective on retired feelings, but if you still don't like reading about strangers' bad life experiences, I'm not going to blame you. Thank you for stopping by, regardless! I've switched phones multiple times, as well, so a lot of these I don't have an accurate date of.

Happy reading!

Why Grieve?

written: April 20th, 2025.

You had citrus-sweet yesterdays; evenings heavy with petrichor sky. Why does today have to be any different? Walk waist deep in a stream. Arrange your stuffed animals in a row. Stay up late with a flashlight and a library book. Our worst vice, branded into our backs by adulthood, is to be skeptical of forever.

notes about this work: I was sitting in the sun on Easter with my family when I realized this moment was not dissimilar from the childhood moments I often found myself longing for. Sure, a lot of things may be different—maybe you live somewhere else, maybe your financial status is different, etc, but moments and feelings live forever if you decide you want to keep them. It was me who had unconsciously decided to stop wading in streams when I got older, and me who stopped voraciously consuming library books, and when I had the opportunity to do so again, it was like my life picked back up from the beginning. I take comfort in the idea that I get to decide when something is over and when it isn't.

Birthmarks

written: 2024? late 2023?

I look for the brands my brother left when we left him

I grow my hair like a brother from another life

I keep the men that raised me like a birthmark on young skin

Like age murders in a blink, but you knew once that it meant something

After Resurrection

written: 2024

Do you think Jesus heard tales of how his Father ripped out Lucifer's tongue, and knew what he had to do? When he walked through that door again, did God ask His son how he liked it--this Earth He created--just to bask in the silence?

notes about this work: I've always felt that Jesus was the first sufferer of religious trauma. Characterized as endlessly kind, I just can't imagine him seeing the horrors he had to heal, and not having questions of his own of why the world had to be like this, if his father is supposedly all-powerful. For the reasons stated above, though, he of course would have to keep those thoughts to himself.

Between Streams

written: April 17th, 2025.

There is a holler

Carved deep between streams

Where time is so sheer

You'll find me still standing there

x

I will be sunburned

Round-cheeked

Singing to the trees

And waiting for an answer

x

When you see me

Don't let this fool you

Keep your lips pursed

Leave my ghost to soliloquys

x

Only through my own voice

Would I ever believe

That the land has only given

So it could take away

x

The clay under the cabin

Was red for a reason

Only through choice

Could I let myself see

notes about this work: I'm dissatisfied with the final two lines, but I've been through like 90 replacement ones and none of them did the trick. I'm just going to leave it there I suppose.

Blackberry Children

written: 2023 or 2024

In some yesterday, you'd tie your shoes for me. Bake my breakfast, suffer angry patches of skin to keep mine unkissed. But I, seven years old on this ripe day, am looking at your face, and I know something you don't: you are not rotten. Your plump cheeks can still reach the end of the season.

notes about this work: This one is based on one of my main writing projects, Haven, from the perspective of the protagonist.