Surrender to What?

Fragments from late winter 2026

I’ve never had a relationship that changed how I lived. I rarely am challenged by them. People usually bow down eagerly, voluntarily. They just prefer to witness.

I’m resistant to change how I spend my days. Following through on connections. How I spend my time. Secrecy, privacy, sharing my days. I don’t share much. I don’t commit to commitment. I don’t like to be bounded or possessed. I want to own all of me. Be in complete control.

I feel tied up, irritated, annoyed. Obligations make me feel out of control. Like my choice is being taken away. That’s why I run from certain expectations. Outside of family I don’t want people to expect things from me. I feel suffocated, manipulated, and rejected for who I am.

People tell me that I’m too private. That I tolerate too much. They say they can’t read me. They don’t know their place in my life. I’m judgemental. I see the good too much. I see something worth loving.

I don’t listen to constructive criticism or perceptions of me from people who aren’t curious of me. I intellectualize my fear of closeness. My commitment fears. I make excuses for others’ behaviors. I empathize too much. Any little thing I find wrong.

I was on my own way too early and way too long to believe long-term relationships are nourishing and safe enough to have.

I can hear how I’m perceived but I don’t care. I don’t wallow or fret. I continue to be.

Why is this the way? Why does my body crave this? Accountability, expectations, surrender. Surrender to what? A bunch of confused souls? Beings not to be trusted because they don’t trust themselves.

Y makes my body feel safe so it must be right. Right?

X says he’s going away. He says he feels like I abandoned him. He guessed I don’t care for him.

I ache. I don’t want to lose us, but I don’t want him. Well maybe here and there, not how we were.

X appeals to my shadow. I feel he wants me to beg him to stay. I won’t. His heart is broke and I can feel it. I don’t want to discard him.

He isn’t a good friend though and he tries as a lover but he isn’t reliable.

X understands my pain. He’s seen my spirit. I don’t need his company, but I want it. His adoration, his obsession. I feel like I’m real for a moment, I want to exist in that. Being somebody to somebody. Having physical comfort, sweetness.

X has me on a pedestal. He idolizes me. He knows little about me.

I’ll miss him, how he made me laugh, and wrote me poems. How he thought about me. Yearned for me, wants me. He is deceptive though and manipulative and he lies and he’s there when it’s convenient. It’s hurtful because I question if he really wanted me. I create fantasy and make believe. I get lost in it and forget what’s real.

I did not want to spend Valentines together. I did not want to keep rejecting him cause my heart isn’t in it anymore.

I Want to Be Ugly

I feel more and more feral.

I want a different word. Unhinged.

I want to be ugly. I want to be a mess—show my ass.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again. Saying more. Saying less. Using my face and body to communicate.

It is noticeable.

I want them to see my wholeness. I won’t shy away.

I play with myself, my thoughts, my perceptions. I challenge. I rebel.

I believe in letting the darkness play out. Something is ready this era. I have wants. I’m human too. And I’m a generous woman.

I want to be afraid and safe.

I’ve been questioning reality and mortality. Getting nowhere close to anything that soothes and makes sense.

I am struggling to surrender to the care I feel.

I’m realizing I move similarly to my dad

In and out.

How I refuse to acknowledge that others are attached to me and that they are a person. How I’ve lost some humanness through the cracks of me.

Emotionally, I intellectualize my emotions and others’. I feel deeply, but I’m not connected to my feelings fully. I float above, observing.

Solitude protected me from rejection.

Solitude protected me from the noise of the world.

Solitude protected my journey to myself.

I ended up alone while becoming everything.
I am questioning everything about relationships.
I see what part of me must die.
A big chunk of my identity.

How pathetic. How humbling these human feelings.

I bite my tongue. Resentment fills my mouth as acid.

Behind the barricades
The grip on surrender

I found my sun
By my bedside
On a river
It didn’t take me
Where I’m going
Oh, the faces
I meet

A piece of her
Crawled from her insides
When they were all fresh and overdue
When nobody wanted her
She couldn’t keep herself

I’ve been delving into a new territory with my art.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again.

She Who Lives in My Chest

my heart is selfish
and only wants me

She’s abusive,
intrusive.
She swallows me hidden.

I’m in love with her
I trust her

She forces me,
shoves truth
out from my belly
through my clenched teeth

She makes me throw up,
nice and neat.
She edges me to moonstone tears

Even I am sick of me
and my selfish heart

She allows me to fold
as she soaks into my Viking thighs

I wouldn’t still be alive
without her

Benevolent Cruel Season

an angel from the sun
who knew when to be lost
she’s benevolent
a cruel season
she began only to end
one day with her
was worth searching for
nothing about her was linear
she ran intoxicatingly
cold plunging into the hearts of her prey
she was found on the last eclipse
making mosaics
writing poems about it
what an imagination she is

Weave

i weave tension
as eyes made contact
as our stare shapes
fantasy and eruption
we are careless
we destroy out of delight
our passion with walls poured pride
we became one another’s prey
i am dancing on the world
you buillt it with the grit between our souls’ teeth

Crystal Clear Confusion

The center is a labyrinth.
We close our eyes to seek it
It likes to absorb itself
in hues of the abyss
Our fragments hide and seek
Bend at the pond
That foreign transparent center
Crystal clear as confusion

Flesh

She was
a woman of flesh
pacing
back and forth
softened down
till her belly aches
chaotic to escape
with everything to lose
and those summer blues
lived
to consume her
she
adored being consumed
after allowing herself
to turn stray
hmm
maybe someday

From Long and Long Ago

I saw a monarch butterfly today
the second one I’ve seen all summer.
She met me in broad daylight,
amid a treacherous slumber.

Told me to listen. Just listen.
What you need lives in the air.
To float like me is to be far and near.

I remember you, I say.
You remember me? she asks
from long and long ago.

She offered me pine and mulberries
to savor in my dreams.
My heart was seen.