Skyla GM

Skyla GM Jul 27

A hostile rumbling
growls from the deep—
den where it sleeps,
waiting.

Slowly,
patiently,
ready
to emerge-
Like me.

Skyla GM Jul 27

Your silver voice,
slick as a fish,
I’d gut,
dice,
and toss
to the sharks.

Velvet and hypnotic,
you sweet-talk your way
through our minds—
slipping past our conscience
and every blaring red flag,
entangling us
in pleasant submission.

I’m desperate
to erase
every trace of you.

Skyla GM Jul 25

My Bible is Heavy Now

My Bible is heavy now.
Not in its size,
But the burden of your words
Scratched between each line.

I used to trace these pages
And find light and wonder—
But now I wonder
How easily I believed
The stories told to me.

Now I flinch at familiar lines
And the most common of quotations—
Rearranged,
Deeply mistaken.

You made excuse after excuse,
Twisting blessings into bruises.
You carved loopholes into love,
Called cruelty a “calling,”
Named silence “submission.”

The simplicity of the Gospel
Was lost in your justifications—
Layered with anecdotes,
Disturbed by additions.

You rewrote the margins
With authority you were never given.
You added shame to grace,
And control to the cross,
As if Christ bled for your power.

Now I read with trembling,
Every verse a battlefield with arrows drawn—
A war between your stretched theology
And a fragile hope
That I will still hear
A sacred voice
In all this violence.

This poem is about what happens when scripture is twisted to justify harm.
When the voices we trusted add their own commentary—layered with shame, silence, and control.
It’s about spiritual grief.
And the complicated act of still opening the pages,
Hoping to find the real Voice
beneath all the noise.

Skyla GM Jul 25

look at you

When I look at you,
I don’t see Christ.
As a Christian, I know how often we say
That Christ should be seen
In the way we live and the words we speak.
But when I look at you—
I don’t see Christ anymore.

When I look at you,
I see Satan.
I see birds drowning
In oil-slicked feathers.
I smell rotting eggs
And feel the bile rising in my throat.
I see crocodile teeth
And blood on your hands.
I hear your deceit—
I swear, I can taste your lies,
Rancid as spoiled meat.

I do not see Christ in your smile.
I do not hear kindness
In the “kind” words you speak.
Though they may sound sweet,
They are soaked in decay.

I don’t see Christ in you anymore.
When I look at you—
I see Satan
Hiding behind
All of your hidden doors.

This piece is for the leaders I once looked up to—those in YWAM who claimed the name of Christ but chose power, deception, and harm.
It’s not written in hate.
It’s written in grief.
It’s written in truth.
Because there’s nothing Christ-like about manipulation, silence in the face of abuse, or hiding behind spiritual language to justify control.
I used to see Christ in you.
But now—I see something else.

Skyla GM Jul 21

I Sorrow for Your Sorrow

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.

Skyla GM Jul 15

Counting Stolen Time

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.

Skyla GM Jul 14

Disruptive

Disruptive
They called me—
Disruptive
Me
Disruptive
Dis-ruptive
Disrup-tive
Disruptive?

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

Disruptive
And everyone can see—
Disruptive
Me