Neighbors are arguing

I am uncomfortably

Smoking a cigarette

Trying not to listen to them

Trying instead to focus on this podcast

About militarized police

And how democracies end

It started with
a dimming of the light
to slow my breathing.

to stop my thoughts
to barricade
to blame.

To never look myself in the eye
but in the mirror see
an empty body
surrounding me.

To fail in every role of mine
fulfilling my own prophecy.

Then rip out my heart
for the empty heavens
the cruel blue sky,
the mocking clouds.

Finally to poison
shake and starve
Regurgitate shame
from volcanic guts
to porcelain.

Last to fall on
laminate floor
till the little dog wakes
from  the award of dreamless sleep
because one of us is
hungry.

I tried meeting you where you stood,
made silence feel like something good.
I kept on folding just to cope,
called it patience, called it hope.

I bent so far I lost my shape,
Adjusting to the mood you made.
Held space for you, but not for me —
kept calling strain a kind of peace.

You brushed off things I said were deep,
then blamed me when I couldn’t sleep.
I swallowed truth to keep you still —
but I’m not choking on your will.

I won’t turn off my own desires,
or play it cool to keep things calm.
I’m done setting myself on fire,
just to keep on keeping you warm.

There’s an outfit for each kind of day,
one for work, and one to play.
One for silence, one for charm —
I dress to keep their peace from harm.

I match their tone, their pace, their cue,
become the me they’re walking through.
A shifting shape, a face that fits —
but never quite the one that sits.

I dress in layers not for style,
but just to wear a safer smile.
A thousand looks, a thousand designs —
but none align with what’s in mine.

And every mirror looked back at me
But none of them knew who to be
I learned to read the room so well,
I lost the voice I used to tell.

But fabric wears, and so did I,
the cost of always living shy.
I’ve worn their sizes, played their part —
let fashion hide a restless heart.
But now I pull the stitching tight —
and walk in clothes that finally fit right.

I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.

Howdy! I want to try and connect with my followers better…and even some of you who aren’t following me yet! One of the things that I am most passionate about in life is music. It’s one of my go to salves when I’m in distress and my tastes are eclectic! But I’m curious,

What bands/artists are in your current rotation?

For me it’s: Coheed and Cambria, Sleep Token, President, mastodon, and Lorna Shore.

Take it
Wrest it
Rip it
From the clutches
Of my claims
When they are splayed
And splattered
Matters
Of my brainless
Bullet aims
Still fixing
Barrels
To the temples’
Self-imposed
Alienation
Making wars
And civil wastelands
Of the isolated nation