June 15, 2024

My, my, my, X.
Wind-chimes braid themselves
up and down my core,
shivers down my spine, fingers spaced apart.
My center solidifies and my mind melts—
a proper malfunction…
.
Sometimes I wonder if he sees me.
I see him.
No pressure, no law.
I need X for certain things,
he needs me for certain things.
.
It won’t last,
I hold on to the now.
Let go.
Lean…
.
I think we can be good for each other.
I reject the law
that says only permanence has worth.
Connection is enough,
even if it shifts and dissolves.
.
Our fingertips touch—
flashing life, lust, tenderness.
I’ve never seen his eyes before.
I recognize his touch as my own.
I remember the caress of every lover.
.
I don’t know him
But his wild is my wild.
I honor what we are,
without demanding what we are not.
I want.. I don’t receive..
I’m too solid
There’s something I’d..
I can see..
If he falls

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

She Will Return

You’ve inflicted a wound
down the length of her spine.
Sabotaging the currents
to maintain her movements
give way to the wind.

With the immense distance it provides,
she will carry on.
Her skin sticks and glows a little,
glistens in the sunlight.

She’ll return
and destroy all that you are,
leaving behind
trails of ash and stains

The One Who Stayed Grounded

He aroused me till numb

My heart sedated by his insanity

Caught me mid-revelation

Reaching for me at the height of his vision

.

I wanted him to come with me

But he wasn’t that type of guy

It pained him to watch me as I’d fly

Still front and center he’d release me wild

He ached to carry me whenever I fell

.

Rubbed me up with aloe vera

And intuitive kisses to heal

Wanted to make it well

Fading as I opened to it

Defeated in the win

So I held him also in sin.

The Ground Still Loved Me

I’ve been crying hard.
It’s what I do best.
The ground is loved on by the seeds of clouds.

But I’m fragile,
and I soften in explosion.
When I experience grief,
I face it suddenly.
There is no space

— from Repetitions of Ruin 
(incantations from the same wound)

I Try To Unwrite It

Sometimes I reread the poems I wrote for past lovers and feel like… this was too good for them. I try to take it back

Too tender. Too raw. Too sacred.

Bitterness shows up first.

Memory comes next. 

With it the soft ache of truth.

I remember why I wrote it, the little universe we lived in for a while. 

And I remember.

I remember it was theirs. Because a version of me meant it.

Even if they didn’t deserve the whole poem forever.

Some things are real just because they happened.

And some people get lucky enough to be written about.

The love was real, so was the poem.

So I give it back.

Ripe and Mean

When we went without
I forgot my name
Things were not good
We’d be ripe and mean
We’d beg and fight
Skin splitting
Play tug of war with our faces
Growl through negative space
I am awake
I am awake
I am awake
I plead
insanity
I give
him control
Still
painting him in contrast