Autumn flower,
You’re late.

Where have you been?
The party eras ago
The guests gone
The wine dried,
The music just a ghost.

And yet,
Here you are,
Stepping into the silence
In that blood-red gown,
Stealing the show from the last tired dancers.
Spinning.
Alive.

The few that remain,
Wilted and bent at the spine,
Turn to stare
How rare you are.
How few like you ever bloom
This far into the end.

They taste your blood
And become your fiends.
They will crave the ghost of your breath
Like one last breeze
Through your autumn trees.

But you
You fall in silence.
Your descent, delicate.
Almost holy.

And though I’m not like the few
Who only gaze and ache
I’m the one
Who tried to hold you
Then let you go.

Still, I wait
Just to witness
Your final descent beneath the soil.
To the table where water holds
The weight of the world.

Where your scent stains the stream,
And the petals float on, like sweet red dreams.

But if you try sometimes
Well, you just might find
You get what you need

You are the what I need
Not a want, but the ache that eats
At the core of me, quietly
Louder than hunger,
Sharper than thirst.

The what I can’t always hold
Slips through like heat
Between cold fingers.
After decades of drought,
A taste of wet spring fills in my lungs.

Wings-
Wings I didn’t know I had
Began to flutter in my chest,
A frantic rhythm,
200 beats a second
For ten long years.
No rest.

I was inches from ending.
And you kissed the failure from my breath,
Held the wires of my failing heart
And whispered rhythm back into me.

If I had to die in that moment,
Your lips would’ve made it sweet.
But I didn’t.
Because you were
The what I needed.

In the crush of black that breathes like a lung,
I dream of faces stitched in wrong
too close to mine,
too smooth, too still,
like mannequins afloat in thoughtless will.

The stars above are drowned in pitch,
a cosmic sea where logic splits.
I float past doors with names I knew
but none of them remember you.

The hallway loops, the lights stay dead,
and something walks where thoughts won’t tread.
I see myself through warped glass eyes,
mouthing truths my voice denies.

What house has no rooms but echoing breath?
What mirror leaks salt in the arms of death?
I have fallen up, and swum down wrong,
to where pressure turns names into static song.

There is no sky, there is no floor
only corridors behind each door.

So I marry the current, I wed the void,
A bride of depth, a ghost employed
to haunt the halls of human shape
a drowned reflection, wide-awake.

And when I scream, it sounds like sea
the sound of something once like me.

And here I am
daydreaming about you
in a room stitched from the mouths of clocks,
time melting on the walls
like candlewax gods.

No trace, no else
just space unraveling its seams.
Faces bloom like smoke
in the corners of my dreams,
unknown to the few who dared to show
their truth in ultraviolet glow
fragile, trembling with the fear
that love itself
might disappear.

The world they cradle
could be shattered
by a sleeping man’s unsung voice,
his silence a scalpel,
his slumber a choice.

Refusal hums.
Salvation stalls.
Dragged through dream-halls
lined in gold-flecked absolution,
the final cut
a butchered execution.

Prognosis:
you’re dreaming,
but you’ve already been found dead.
Gone from this plane,
no longer to tread.

The coil spins on
in trembling suspension,
a serpent of lust,
charged with ****** tension.

Somewhere,
a siren calls to arms
a bitter, ******* revolution
limping through static fields
of illusion.

Trans girl love
in electric mutation,
a kiss on the lips
of a dead star nation

I am a patient,
even without the paperwork.
Fighting off the fog
with flower instead of prescriptions,
choosing green over the cold bite
of chemical chains.
**** keeps me steady.
Keeps me soft.
Keeps me here.

I’ve studied this plant
like scripture passed down in whispers,
watched buds form like slow miracles
sacred, sticky,
glowing under grow lights
like halos on a hard day.

I’ve spoken to the leaves
like kin who remember
when the world made more sense.
This isn’t just a hustle or a job.
This is a calling,
a path I’ve taken
with bare feet and open palms,
whether the world welcomes me or not.

If I had the space,
the tools,
the soil
I’d grow medicine
for every aching soul I crossed paths with:

sun-kissed colas
to hush the sleepless,
oil for the grieving,
tinctures for the hollowed-out hearts
of a world stretched too thin by fear.

Because this isn’t about getting high.
It’s about getting whole.
And helping others feel
just a little more rooted
in a life that still hurts
but also heals.

I came out with the desert sun
setting fire to the sky and my skin
Tucson peeled me open like citrus.
I was 28,
a suitcase, a ukulele,
and a hunger for something true.
Something that didn’t taste like sacrifice.
Something like sour Skittles.

Illinois clung to my boots like guilt,
but I left it behind
along with the secondhand names
and the silence that hummed at every family dinner.
They say they expected it.
But what does that even mean?
Was I a whispered prophecy,
a rumor passed between casserole dishes?

And yet.
I’m more alive now
than I ever was in my own childhood.
Back when Lunchables were treasure chests
and sour Skittles were holy communion,
a ritual:
**** the sugar off,
then bite down on what’s left.

That’s what transition feels like.
Strip the sweet lies,
feel the sting,
then chew through the core.

I used to be a lonely train
on a flat, frozen plain.
Now I’m a subway station at rush hour,
voices bouncing off tile,
ADHD blooming into a kind of brilliance
I never knew I owned.

There is no arrival point,
no final platform
just motion and growth,
just the ache of becoming,
just this bite of electric candy
melting on my tongue.

And I love her
the girl in the mirror.
Even as she’s still learning to hold herself,
sometimes forgetting
that she’s already whole.

But I remember,
when my mouth goes raw
from the citric burn,
that it’s okay to savor joy
after everything it took to earn it.

I was not born divine.
I was made.
And I am still making myself
with sugar and spit,
with lipstick and laughter,
with every sour Skittle
I **** between my lips
like a prayer with teeth,
I’ll give this life another bite.

Skies of blue, soft morning light,
Your lover’s eyes cut clean and right.
Beneath their tide, I sink, amazed
Breathing deep in your carnivorous gaze.

A porcelain smile, so sharp, so wide,
Wings of pride you cannot hide.
Signed in gold from gods above,
A letter sealed in boundless love.

I’d tear the sky and rise so high,
To feast where beauty never dies.
To touch love’s edge with steady hand,
And hold the stars like grains of sand.

But I’ve gone rogue from your sacred eyes,
Lost adrift in lavender skies.
A starry heart in twilight’s hue,
Sprawled on fields of evening dew.

Like a lamb born wet in southern spring,
I see what truth your glances bring.
You burn through all my soft white lies,
Torching the future with flame bright cries.

From down in the Delta where old ghosts bide,
Runs deep-soul heat and Louisiana pride.
Don’t mess around with this Southern bride
Give me a hit of that Cajun swamp-town high.