Skyla GM

Skyla GM Aug 3

Silly things they are—
companions at best,
and true friends, even better.

Mine is the brown kind,
with smoldering eyes
and a folly for snacks,
scolding the trees late at night,
awakening me to
his fierce, warrior ways
every time a loud engine brays.

I wish to keep you forever and ever,
every moment—
you and me, together.

But ten years is a long while
for a dog like you.
I guess I'm just grateful
that happiness
is all you ever knew.

Skyla GM Aug 3

Shore for Me

I wouldn’t mind
a slow
drifting
into love—
with time enough
to look around,
to listen close,
to ask the sea
if this
is truly
the shore
for me.

Skyla GM Jul 30

Permission Free

I have waited
for permission
all my life—
the approval
and agreement
of others
I thought
were greater than me.

So please,
listen closely:
here is the key—
to open, to unlock
every door
you will ever see.

I am giving you
permission—
but, lovely,
you never needed it.

So go,
go-
permission free.

Skyla GM Jul 28

Wrinkles and Youth

One day
my hands will look like my mother’s—
and I wonder
if I’ll ever notice
the progression.

My daughter
will place her hand beside mine,
comparing landscapes
as though the veins and wrinkles
etched across my palms
were foreign elements,
strange and distant.

When the years
have piled high,
and I can finally say
I’ve been old
far longer than I was young,

perhaps I too
will place my hand beside
my granddaughter’s—
and study the difference
like a language
I was once fluent in.

Skyla GM Jul 28

Once I Was Eaten by the Sea

Once I was eaten by the sea—
its waves, the hands that grabbed at me.
No air to breathe, no land for feet,
it seemed that I was all but lost:
blind and beaten, thrown and tossed.

But then I heard the sweetest sound:
my own heart’s beat—pound, pound, pound.
And up from those waves, my body rose
until my face had broken shore.

My eyes, they burned; my ears, they rung,
but that deep fear was all but gone.

Skyla GM Jul 27

Dullness Unfilled

Let me cry.
Let me mourn.
Let me be deeply torn—
soul ripped,
thread by thread.

I wonder how a soul bleeds.
Is it in tears?
Or does it lose its light—
dimming, dimming—
until the body holds
only a dullness
unfilled.

Skyla GM Jul 27

Tell My Daughter

I will tell my daughter
how good she is—
not of sin
or eternalness.

I will tell my daughter
how free she is—
not of shame
or brokenness.

I will tell my daughter
how light lives in her bones,
not that she was born
already wrong.

I will tell my daughter
she does not need redeeming—
not from herself,
not from her body,
not from modern perversions
spoken by trembling men.

I will tell my daughter
she is not a stain
on holy ground—
she is holy ground.

I will tell my daughter
there is nothing
in her laughter,
her questions,
her wildness,
her wonder—
that needs to be tamed
or forgiven.

I will tell my daughter
she was never the problem.

She was always the proof
that goodness can breathe
in human skin.