i want to peel your skin back
and reveal your deepest sweetness.
to look at your veins
and memorize their paths.
maybe then i’d understand
why you are so rough on the outside.
it takes a lot of work,
digging your fingernails into the flesh,
pulling and pulling until you are bare.
but it is all worth it;
to visit your center,
to break past what conceals you,
and take you apart
slice by slice.

There are paths you don’t choose
but find yourself on,
waking one day to realize
you’ve left the voice that once
called you home.

There are people—
beautiful, bruised,
who touched the hem of healing

and stepped back

as if love would demand too much.

And I wonder how God handles
the slow disaster
of the almost-return.
The ones who knew,
who felt,
who started to lean in—
but didn’t.

Does He grieve
like a father who watches
his child walk past the open door,
too ashamed to knock?

Or does He simply wait—
unmoving,
unchanged,
burning with a stillness
only eternity understands?


Because I still ache
in the temporary.
I still hold their names
in my prayers
like broken glass
pressed into palms
that would have held them whole.

I finally feel
like I'm me again
I haven't felt this good
Since I don't know when
My heart is not heavy
my mind is not spinning
My soul is uplifted
my life rebeginning
My future looks brighter
The path is made clear
My family is closer
My friends are more dear
I’ve learned many lessons
That got me to this place
But the greatest of all
Is to give myself grace

Sunbeams through the window are like childhood memories—
Warm, vivid, and simply true.
And they never leave me, even when I’ve forgotten.

do Orion and
the Pleiades
ever gaze at
you and me?
for we are what
they hope to be,
begot by stars,
a conscious sea,
and even pain
means we feel things