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.

The Alchemy of Ache: Poetry as Portal, Memory as Ritual, Writing as Survival

I sometimes peel myself for fun
forgetting I am dripping

I devour this holy pomegranate
for my last meal

While the world makes love
to cope with flesh
I vow to touch the earth
with the courtesy of life in mind

Through every door
every portal
I walk
fall
burn

and come back
to myself
again
and again

– Freegrandmaa





I’ve never been a tidy writer. I don’t write from outlines. I don’t plan.
Because pain rarely makes sense while you’re inside it. Because memory doesn’t arrive in full sentences. Because healing isn’t clean. And neither is truth.

My hands have always been frantic, scratching, scribbling, collaging, bleeding. Before I had language for what I was feeling, I had survival instinct. My chaos moved through my fingers. I drew. I cut. I self-harmed. I wrote. It wasn’t for performance. It was so I wouldn’t drown.

When I finally found poetry, it didn’t feel like art. It felt like company.

I remember sitting alone by a stream in Ohio. I had followed a lover to a place where no one wanted me. Not him, not my family. Isolation cracked me open. Trauma rose in the silence like smoke. I was drowning in rejection, misunderstood and invisible, waiting to feel like someone again.

That’s when the butterfly showed up. It lingered. It saw me. It didn’t save me, but it stayed long enough to let me feel seen. And in that moment, the words came like a river. Unfiltered, unconscious, mythic. The poem didn’t try to make sense. It just felt real. And for the first time in a long time, I felt real too.

I don’t write logically. I write neurologically. I write like the body remembers. Trauma doesn’t give you stories, it gives you sensations. The brain breaks memory into fragments. You remember a sound, a flinch, a smell. Not a plot.

My poetry mirrors that. That’s why my lines come in flashes. Why my metaphors feel mythic. Why there’s no narrative arc, only spirals, symbols, sobs, silences.

Writing that follows the rhythm of memory, not structure. Writing that reveals the subconscious, not logic. Writing that bleeds in a language the nervous system can trust. I didn’t learn this. I survived into it.

I am what I call an underworld translator, a shadow scribe, a nervous system medium.
I write from inside the burn.. I speak from the parts of the self most people try to avoid. The underworld is not hell, it’s the unspoken. The grief you buried. The version of yourself that exists beneath the mask. The shadow self waiting not to haunt, but to be integrated.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m just romanticizing it all. If shadow work is just another addiction. If I’m still self-harming, but this time with metaphors. If I’m scripting pain to feel in control.

But this is also true: there is no light without this walk. There is no peace without knowing what almost destroyed you. And writing is how I know the difference. If I let it be ugly, feral, fragmented, then I know I’m not hiding anymore.

Because when you don’t face your underworld, it doesn’t disappear, it mutates. Into numbness. Into avoidance. Into loneliness. Into cruelty. It passes down. What you refuse to integrate, your children inherit.

I write because I didn’t

Must

“One mustn’t fret, but instead breathe. Fall into the void of life. Smile, hands up. Embrace the ride..”

“One must ground daily with the percussion of the past performing. One must be here, find it wherever you are..”

Black Sheep

I can go anywhere and find home on my skin
Resting in dew
What’s new
When strangers are blue
Sketched and watercolored onto blocks
I’m an iridescent rock with moss
I wrap my locs when I’m around em
Pretend I’m Medusa, not a bit hesitant
And my shadows vow to move exactly how I move
As I pretend to blend in as if I belonged here
I dodge small talk
I know real voices, true hearts
I’ve mastered how to mirror; starting over less foreign than I
I knew I was alright
I was a locust bite, bitter
In the cool hybrid air
I made my way through the stolen
What I gave away could never keep up
My gift was melted and sculpted
Sometimes I’d call it love

Form

She sways and she fades

Condensing as we name her audacious

Sometimes I shout it too

With her I had no clue

.

My love comes in all forms

She’s cold and lukewarm

When she melts I melt with her

I have faith in her rigid lorn

.

Chant and sing these warnings

She is everything

She is nothing within

On the mountain where I placed her

She was my only friend

.

I was free to scrutinize her

She was decay and serpent

Offered me to experience life freely

She wouldn’t dare come with me

I’d repent to see her nearly

Lifted

Hovering by my bedside

With some lips that tucked me in

Nothing special to keep us up all night

We made sure when we’re together we’re lifted

Still

The window is broken but you open it still

Creating mass and spaces to sit on

To worry about; challenge freedom in

You help me speak and understand nothing

There is no right or wrong with you

Newness

What news!

The arrival

And the departure

Both equal in value and pleasure

To the adventurous wondering soul

Close enough

I cried out mercy and an added hour
I sought out fairytales and provoked hallucinations to deter
Please reflect, deflect, respect my ignorance
I’ll never name it by bliss; terror neither though close enough