Father, listen, do you hear
The wailing spirit's desperate sound?
See you the black despair
That like a python 'round his neck is wound?
His light, it flickers, dimmer seeming,
As he off his hope is weaning,
As the stars all fall careening
From his eyes down to the ground.
He wonders if You've vanished,
Or if 𝒽ℯ is lost to ne'er be found.

Father, I know that You
And your compassion for us Men are real.
Your hands can still do miracles,
My eyes have 𝓈ℯℯ𝓃 them work and heal.
So hear my prayer as I plead
For this dear soul in dire need --
Set him from this bleak shadow freed,
Wrap him in love that he can feel!
And if he must this fire endure,
Then forge him into stronger steel.

To My Love,

We survived.

Through the storms, through the silence, through the ache of not being understood
we are still here. Not perfect, not untouched, but held. By something greater than both of us.

We searched for freedom, both in our own ways, and we didn’t know it then, but the search was the meaning. In that longing, we found God. And in God, we found that we were already whole.

The devil tried to break me. Tried to convince me that pain was my portion. But he didn’t see the strength of the Spirit living in me. Or the quiet, stubborn hope that still lives in you.

We pour into each other, even when we feel empty. And somehow God fills us back up.

We still hope for one another. And that hope? That’s love. That’s grace. That’s us.

I believe in who we’re becoming, not by force, not by fixing but by remembering who we already are in Him.

They cut, crush, cauterize or tie off the eyestalk
of female prawns and shrimp
to stimulate faster reproduction
   usually without anesthesia

I often wonder the complexity of pain felt
when they flail about helplessly
disoriented and dissevered

Do they     rejoice?  

For their life has a gained greater purpose.

Or do they mourn what once was?

For the following generations will be disease-prone and decline
and suffer
and decay.

Nothing we haven't already done to ourselves admittedly.
We might actually be the only organisms
unable to cohabitate with each other.

We seek God to fear our actions
that are preached as sins.
It keeps us good and honest
Yet our empires and civilizations repeatedly fall
generation after generation
as power is granted to our rulers that partake in
Eyestalk Ablation.

For we worship them over God himself.
It's a good thing we were getting tired of God anyways.

In the still of night, a plan took flight,
Like doves in the sky, so pure and bright.
But shadows whispered of danger near,
God saw the path and drew you near.

With gentle wings, He changed the way,
Protecting your heart, come what may.
So let the doves fly, unburdened and true,
For what was meant to harm you, God turned into good.

Pick me up in my dream tonight,
Lead me home through quiet halls of light,
Where sorrow cannot follow,
Where echoes do not weep.

Welcome me beyond the veil,
Where gold bends beneath weary steps.
Let me rest beside You,
While below, my mother lingers,
A figure draped in mourning,
Hands trembling over a name
She will never call again.

I have left her with the ghosts of joy,
I have torn the sun from her sky,
With love spilled from open veins,
Drop by drop,
Like rain that never reaches the earth,
Like autumn leaves too heavy to dance,
The last breath of fading stars.

If only the dead could speak,
If only breath could slip through silence,
I would press my voice into the wind:
“Forgive me, mother.”
“I love you, always.”

Pick me up in my dream tonight.
For the war has quieted in my marrow,
And the sword I have carried, heavy with grief,
Lies rusted at my feet.

Let me fold into the roots of the Tree of Life,
Let the sun warm my hollow chest,
Let my lashes kiss the light one final time,
And as my breath unspools into nothing,
As my body bends to ash, to dust, to light,

I am home.

He said I always make things worse.

I traced our last conversation
inside my lip with my tongue,
until it burned like citrus.

My teeth still taste like that night—
miso soup, metallic coffee, a dare—
and the word “almost” said until it split.

I don’t start the fires—
I just know how to fan them
so the smoke spells mine,
so the ashes spell proof.

“You’re welcome for the mirror,” I said,
then, “You flinched first,”
like scripture I was tired of reciting.

He called me a problem
and then prayed for something exciting.
Well, God listens.
And she’s been on my side lately.
(And sometimes inside me.
And sometimes wearing red.)

You say I write like it’s a weapon.
But you brought a sword to my poem.
You heard me speak—and called it war.

I’m not the plot twist.
I’m the motif.
I’m the whisper that keeps showing up
even when you don’t name it.
Especially when you don’t name it.

You wanted a girl who could break
without getting any on your shoes.
Who called it miscommunication
when it was a massacre.
I called it Thursday.

I made you feel.
You made it a crime scene.
Now every sentence tastes like sirens.
But sure—blame me
for the blood in your mouth
when you kissed me wrong.

So yeah—
maybe I do make things worse.
But worse is where the story gets good.
Where you start reading slower.
Where your hands start shaking.

It’s not that I ruin things.
I just ask questions
that don’t look good in daylight.

It’s not that I mean to wreck things.
I just don’t know how to leave a room
without checking every exit
twice.

And labeling each one ‘almost.’

You ever love someone
so hard you forget to be charming?
Me neither.

He thought he was the mystery.
I’m the red string
and the corkboard
and the girl in the basement
with the map of everything that never happened.

You didn’t fall for me.
You fell through me.
That’s not my fault.
It’s gravity.
Or girlhood.
Or God, laughing behind her hand.

Say it again. Slower. This time, with your hands in your pockets.