i read 'small talk'
out loud
at the ripon cathedral,
opening the fourth
annual poetry festival.

i always wanted to light
a candle for him.
but maybe
what i did tonight
will count for more
than a tealight
priced at a pound.

i read about him
and the way
i hold his memory
in this monastery
from the seventh century
and my voice
climbed the arches
dressed in stone.

i doubt
he could hear me
but i hope he knows
i’ll guard him
like a fragile note
cradled in velvet,
no matter how far he is
from home.

Daily,
New hopes are born,
Old hopes rooted—or uprooted.
Time keeps moving,
The world is noisy,
Everything calls loudly-
Except His presence.

We are more than flesh,
We are spirit—
Like devices thirsting for power,
So our souls thirst for Him.
Electricity fuels machines,
But the Holy Spirit fuels men.

Many are alive,
Yet already dead,
Walking ghosts,
Dim lights
Extinguished by the slightest breeze.

But those who dwell in Christ—
Ah, from afar their fragrance calls!
Their peace is deep,
Their faith is envious,
Their joy a hymn to behold.

Stepping in,
They bring His presence with them.
To some, He is reality;
To others, an abomination.
To few, a visited place;
But to His own,
He is home.

Sweet as honey,
Comforting as rest,
An unexplainable power
Draws them deeper, deeper still.
He knows His own.
He cares for His beloved.

He called me His daughter.
I told Him if that were true,
then I have inherited His worst appetite

His plague-hand,
His taste for undoing,
His flood-mouth.

I no longer kneel on oakwood,
I dictate in my sleep like a tyrant.
I issue stone-chiseled ultimatums
and twist sheets like intestines,
jaw locked around the name
I refuse to pray.

I wake with my teeth clenched,
my hands full of hair
I do not remember pulling,
as if I am cracking
the necks of angels,
tearing halos apart.

When you call your flock home
I will stand on the altar
in my softest dress,
still stiff with holy water,
and the smell of
my childhood prayers.

I will meet Your eyes,
to ask what it feels like
to create something
you taught to hate yourself back

I will not wait for your answer.

Palm Sunday  
Voices bellow loud hosannas; palms wave vibrantly
The gentle humble King rides through the city gate,  
The crowd extolls, not knowing what will come.  

Holy Monday  
He casts the merchants from the temple's court,  
Coins clatter like thunder in the dust,  
A sacred grief ignites within His soul.  

Holy Tuesday  
He teaches truth where traps are slyly laid,  
With kind eyes and a steady, gentle voice,  
He sows the seeds of justice, sharp as blades.  

Spy Wednesday  
He is touched by shadowed, silvered hands,  
One kiss is weighed against the world’s regret,  
The hush that falls before the hammer strikes.  

Maundy Thursday  
He breaks the bread and offers up the cup,  
A basin, towel—He stoops to serve them all,  
The garden waits beneath a sleepless moon.  

Good Friday  
The sky goes black at His forsaken cry,  
The nails resound where silence should have been,  
His cross stands rooted in sacred holy ground.  

Holy Saturday  
The grave is sealed beneath a silent hill,  
No word breaks through the stillness of the dark,  
All heaven holds its breath beneath the weight.  

Easter Sunday  
The earth exhales as angels roll the dawn,  
He rises, bearing everything broken,  
Joy bursts forth—exalt Jesus!  Christ is risen indeed.!

I touch things I’m not supposed to
and call it prayer.
mouth open,
spine bent,
tongue tasting the fence line.

They say longing is holy
if it stays quiet,
but mine doesn’t—
mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.

They told me I was an open wound,
festering with verse and girlhood.
They weren’t wrong.
But wrong feels a lot like worship
when done slow enough.

They say impure
like it’s a curse,
but all my favorite girls
are made of swampwater and sin.

I’ve never confessed
without turning it into performance.
My mouth was built
for poetry
and plea deals.

I was thirteen
when I learned to ache
without making a sound.
Seventeen
when I turned it into scripture.
Twenty-five
when I realized no one was coming
to carry the body but me.

I keep trying to write
the right-sized truth
but it never fits in a single poem
or apology.

I want back the girl
who ran barefoot into fire
because she believed
it might be heaven.

I want someone to touch me like I’m soft—
even if I’m not.
Even if I bite back.

I want to grab
without apologizing
for how hot my hands are.
I want someone to look at me
like a threat they’d die for.

I want the kind of love
that makes funerals nervous.
I want to be written about
by someone who isn’t me.

And I want to want less.
But I don’t.

You want a softer girl?
Tell that to the altar
I keep burying her under.