And what of a flower
whose petals fall in a sacrificial ritual
to make room for new ones to grow

the echoes of evil
Live on in our parents
will never stop
unless we remove the walls
upon which to echo.

Here in this suffering, this crucible womb,
The known gods falter, their altars go blind.
Each creed, once golden, now echoes of doom,
Are stripped by the blaze of a self left behind.

The fire, a trickster, conjured by me,
Fed on illusions, I named as my truth,
Burned every surety, scorched every plea,
And laughed in the voice of my long-lost youth.

Beliefs like paper, curled in despair,
Whispered of meaning as smoke drew near;
No prayer could escape, no breath of air,
Only silence now, and the sting of fear.

Oh, sacred pyre, dark alchemist flame,
You steal without mercy, without regret.
Yet in your furnace, I learn my name,
One I had buried, one I’d forget.

Entombed in ash, no breath, no form,
Not dead, but held in the hush of becoming.
This, the still of the spiral storm,
Where soul sheds skin and blood stops drumming.

And then...

In the hush, a tremor, soft as thought.
From soot, from ruin, from what was unmade,
A flicker, a shimmer, a heartbeat caught,
A wing unfolds in the charcoal shade.

Phoenix, I rise, raw, unmasked, untried,
No longer chained to the truths I knew.
From the furnace of lies and the self that died,
Emerges a being fierce and new.

More beautiful now for the burn I bore,
More sovereign now for the faith I lost,
For to rise is not to be as before,
But to bear the bloom that survived the cost.

she is a narcissist
you can find her at 9 o’clock on tuesday nights,
taking photos in front of a full length mirror,
trying to find a spark of beauty in a life that is more bland
than bread without butter, people without mouths, mouths without words
(words outside mouths)

words fall out of her mouth before she can stop them
they are not always hers
she stole them from the magazine she reads on sundays, the one that keeps her distracted
because monday is back to the real world
(school means enemies)


she doesn’t make enemies, she chooses them
she speaks to a boy once and has a bad impression
and for the next three years he somehow manages to make her angry
she hates how he looks, how he talks, how he walks
how he beats her in an election of popularity
he doesn’t know he’s her enemy, but she doesn’t care
(if sharing is caring, she will not even breathe the same air as him)


air isn’t hard to come by, everyone she doesn’t like has a head full of it
everyone she likes also has a head full of it
the difference is that half think she’s crazy, and the other half are crazy
she has pride in herself
(that’s what everyone else thinks)


she has daytime insomnia, except
instead of not falling asleep, she can’t stay awake
in a world of people who think shallow water is safer and
shallow minds are better
it drives her crazy to think of romantic love
(she wants it but i guess she can’t have it)


her life is divided by the color of lockers
the yellow lockers of her first middle school, the good years, when she was admired by everyone
she was smart and charismatic
and she was happy in only a way that a
bee that has never lost it’s stinger can be
(innocent children always change)


the red lockers of a second middle school, full of memories she hopes to forget
the building where she first learned hatred and hopelessness and how you can never take happiness for granted because there will always be someone to take it away
(she was angry at her parents for their uninspired decision to move)


the blue lockers of high school, the idea of which kept her going all through the red year where she almost let go of the thin, little, fraying string of a balloon, keeping her barely out of the reach of the sharp nails of the devil’s paradise
she ran into blue as she ran away from red’s angry arms, crying for help, crying to be saved,
and she was.
she saved herself.


in blue she found herself away from the miserable creatures red produced, and she could never put a pin quite on how it changed
but she fell in love with feeling clean, and she started to look pretty
she pulled herself together and woke up each day grateful for the blue lockers that lined the halls of her high school
(she worked hard to be narcissistic)


she believed she found euphoria
she trusts in herself now, but
only because she trusted everyone at the beginning
(and no one in the middle)


her life is divided by the color of lockers
when she sees photos of the blue of her new school,
she is reminded of the yellow where she was so happy and
the red where the walls of the school mirrored what she saw everytime she closed her eyes
her mind is a board game, divided
by emotional reasoning
(i read an article that said that’s dangerous)

I moved it off the porch today,
where sun falls hard and wide.
The *** is cracked, the roots are weak.
Still, something waits inside.

The blooms were bruised, a weathered pink,
like lips that lost their say.
Still, one had cupped the morning rain
and hadn’t looked away.

My back cried out. I crouched and worked,
Hard knuckles in the dirt.
I cut the dead, I turned the soil,
poured water where it hurt.

I set it by the cedar rail,
where shade and heat align.
Still stiff. Still sore. You’re gone. That holds.
It’s standing. So am I.

Goodbye to me,
an older version of me.
Didn't survive
through the nights,
was guided away by lights.

My body has grown,
my mind did too.
It was time to change,
and that I knew.

Letting go
of fairytales and butterflies,
the endless days
I spent outside.
Used to explore,
learning was joy.
Now it doesn't seem
as fun anymore.