I didn’t mean to let them go—
those words, quick and sharp
as shattered glass. They fell
between us, brittle echoes
splitting the air. I heard them
before they landed,
felt their weight twist my tongue,
knew they’d cut through
what we hadn’t yet finished weaving.

And still, you stood.
Not a wall, but a tree
rooted in wind.
Your breath was slow, deliberate,
a tide that didn’t rise
to meet the storm of me.
Your eyes held me—
not as something to punish
or praise,
but as something still learning
to soften.

Behind you,
your daughter sat silent,
her small frame
pressed into the edges of a room
too big for her understanding.
Not mine, but yours—
her love carried in the tilt of her gaze,
her trust braided into
the rhythm of your voice.
She doesn’t yet know
that words can be knives,
can bloom into scars
years later,
but she knows the way
your hands move—
slow, careful,
as if nothing in this world
is worth breaking.

I watch her watching you,
her young face
a map of wonder and inheritance.
And I wonder if she’ll see
how your quiet
isn’t silence,
but a language of its own—
the kind that teaches without telling,
the kind that steadies
without asking for praise.

Even now,
when I am the storm
tearing through our stillness,
you meet me
not with fire, not with force,
but with the weightlessness of water.
You press truth
into the hollow of my palms,
into the chaos of my mind:

We are not the words
we wish we could unsay.
We are not the wounds
we carry like heirlooms.
We are the spaces between the noise,
the quiet that stays
after the breaking.

I don’t know how to thank you—
not for your strength,
but for your refusal
to make it into armor.
For the way you hold love steady,
a flame too patient to flicker,
even when the wind rises.

The body learns to lie before the mouth does.
She moves like seaweed caught in a current,
the siren song of her hips pulling others closer—
a collision, a shatter.
Hormones bloom like coral,
bright and false,
a reef of dopamine
where nothing survives for long.

Reality is a cruel lover;
its hands too heavy,
its voice too loud.
She asks herself,
do you still wait for love?
do you still have patience for the breaking?

When she confronts him,
his grin splits his face like a wound,
a predator's smile,
the sound of firecrackers between them,
smoke where the truth should be.
He speaks of a *******,
of giving his power away,
of someone else making his choices.
She cannot decide if this is freedom
or just another kind of cage.

She remembers herself,
the way tequila burned her throat,
the way she burned brighter,
a girl in red,
posed naked under the gaze of men
who painted her as both light and shadow.
She trusted their hands before they betrayed her.
Before she turned cold.
Before she fell silent.
Before she hid her fire.

Now, she is the ocean’s daughter,
sinking deeper,
listening to the song of water
as it whispers secrets only the drowned can hear.
She wonders:
Do the waves ever grow tired of crashing?
Does the salt remember being a tear?

She lets herself drift,
thinking maybe, just maybe,
the pressure of the deep
is a softer weight
than the heaviness of love.

Transform my sorrow into gold,
For in the furnace of despair,
Life redefines its purpose,
Crafting beauty from the broken.

I write poetry

to have
a conversation with myself
and with God
and you

to log
everything I see
and think
and feel

to expose
the lessons I was forced to teach myself
the prayers I learned for you
the wisdom you learned for me

to give
and less so to take
and therefore not to make
something of or for myself

only inevitability can be birthed--
with all the cries and wails
that arrive in sync with newness and life--
as I traverse the capacious cavern

inside and realize
to have it is
to log it is
to expose it is

To give.

a cataract of emotion overflowing.
there’s no end in sight.
no wet floor signs.
no life jackets.

i’ve always had a problem pouring too much.
spilling my guts on the floor,
making a mess of it all,
waiting to see how far i could possibly -
fall.

i don’t mean to
i didn’t mean to

my cup is empty and still it never ends.
the water on the floor is turning to ice.
it’s getting colder and colder -
i’m running further and further.

i don’t mean to
i didn’t mean to

i’ll keep trying to run.

-

something about me—
i am full of love,
though it spills unevenly,
pooling in places
that were never meant to hold it.

i am not an optimist,
but i will always cradle someone’s pain,
even when my arms shake,
even when my chest cracks open
to make room for the weight of it.

i forgive easily,
though my memory is stubborn,
carving scars where kindness once rested.
it gets hard—
so hard—
when my love is unreturned,
when it is a whisper in a storm,
or a hand reaching for nothing.

but i will always stay,
always say,
“be who you are,
even if it costs me
a piece of myself.”

i feel things deeply—
every joy, every wound—
and i carry them,
because being human
is not just surviving the hurt
but finding the strength
to keep loving anyway.