Disclaimer
Most of my poetry is very personal and it feels strange 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. Topics can get heavy--but such is the nature of poetry. Thanks for stopping by.
Forty
written: November 16th, 2025.
Forty...
Dates were suicide;
he'd tried life forever
Before the self,
The ocean,
Confirmed the real ocean:
no ears reduce all
notes about this work: This poem and the next are part of a set, both being blackout poems created out of pages by Betty by Tiffany McDaniel. I've found blackout poems are great for when you want to express something but can't find the words for yourself.
Separated
written: November 16th, 2025.
Rising rest
The urn, weary
Carried into the night
Separated from I
x
Yet the dust
Will care.
I will care
That you are gone
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.