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I sorrow for your sorrow—
my hands cannot reach you,
my words cannot fix it.
I cannot shield you,
or chase the dark away.

I sorrow for your sorrow.
I break when you break—
but I am not beside you.
I can’t rescue the day.
I can’t say I’m sorry
in a language you’d understand.

Still—
I sorrow for your sorrow.
And in the stillness of my world,
I make space for your grief.

In my heart,
in my spirit,
I hang a lantern.
I shine what light I can
from across the miles—
and I sorrow with you,
until the sorrow can end.
One, Two, Three, Four
Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine—
Ten.
I could keep counting—
every day you stole from me,
every slice of life shadowed
by your thievery.

Can you give them back?
Can you?
Can you- in any way compensate?

I hope you’ve lost some sleep at night,
waking up
to nightmares of me.
I hope the guilt sticks
in every place you desire to be free.

One. Two. Three.
I wrote this poem in the wake of spiritual abuse that left me shattered in ways I couldn’t see right away—and then couldn’t unsee. For a long time, I told myself I was okay. I wanted to be okay. I tried to act like I was okay. But I wasn’t. I was so deeply destroyed I could no longer do simple things I used to take for granted. Grocery shopping felt terrifying. Driving through town filled me with dread in case someone from that place might see me. I’d cry without warning, sometimes every single day. The memories played like an endless reel in my mind. And then came the dreams—of my teammates, of those leaders, of all the things that broke me.

I wasn’t just dealing with hurt feelings. I was dealing with trauma. PTSD. Something that affects the brain in the same way a physical injury can affect the body. It was like my nervous system had been hijacked, like I was constantly in survival mode. Exhausted. Hyperaware. Hollow.

So many Christians offered well-meaning but painfully hollow advice: forgive, move on, give it to God. But it wasn’t about unforgiveness. It wasn’t about effort. It wasn’t a lack of godliness. It was the very real, life-wrecking impact of spiritual abuse. I needed compassion. What I got was silence, dismissal, and pressure to “get over it.”

This poem is about that. About the years of my life that felt stolen. About the sleep I lost. The joy I lost. The ability to live freely, confidently, and unafraid. It’s about the cost of abuse in the name of religion. It’s about how long I lived in the wreckage, just trying to breathe again. I can’t get those days back. But I can count them. And I can name the truth of what happened.

This is me doing that.
Disruptive
They called me—
Disruptive
Me
Disruptive
Disruptive
Disruptive
Disruptive
Dis­ruptive
Disruptive
Disruptive

Make it a badge.
Disruptive
I’ll wear it
on the collar
of my white button-up shirt.

Disruptive
And everyone can see—
Disruptive
Me
Skyla GM Jul 13
Starfish, starfish
in the sea,
can you see
the things I see?

Little waves may
come and go,
but happier days
I'll never know.

Look, look—
a feathered friend
bends its neck
and lifts its head,

flies away
across the sea—
it sees much more
than I see.
Skyla GM Jul 13
If the stars decide to shine tonight,
wake me up—
so I can see
something beautiful
within
all this darkness.

If only stars could heal broken souls...
but even if
they can't,
I will still
whisper
all of my
secrets and sorrows
to the little lights
who dare to shine
in all this darkness.
Skyla GM Jul 12
Limbo sits with me like a friend.
I wish I never knew her,
but she made the introduction.

When the rest of my life betrayed me,
and left me gasping for some form of function. Limbo came to find me.

So now I sit with Limbo,
and she tells me spiraling stories
of things I've thought of before—
again and again and again.

Limbo doesn’t listen very well,
and she doesn’t like to help.
She just follows me around.

I can’t go back, I know I can’t,
but everything forward seems
like broken glass.

And so Limbo and I sit
on bus stop benches, waiting
for direction.

We sit with family on holidays,
passing around overcooked chicken.

We sit at our office chairs, wishing we were anywhere but there

We sit in an awful, unsettled rhythm—
Limbo and I,
Limbo and me.
Skyla GM Jul 12
I think Jesus may just love
the atheist
more than you.

When was the last time
you admitted
your indifference
to the
suffering and sickness?

If I find more love and grace
in the face of sinful places
then where is God
in your
"holy places"?
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