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
Refocused

Kali Yuga

January 21, 2024
I’m learning so much about my family since opening my home to my little sisters. It’s been hard but also a big opportunity to grow. Ive decided to recreate my role in my family. Moving away from being just the relatable safe big sister to accepting my role as the matriarch. I’m seeing first hand how these kids are being neglected by parents as well as the education system.
The kids are not the problem. Society is failing these kids.
Growing to be the bigger person to take on the role to guide instead of getting stuck in triggers and ego and allowing us all the remain stagnant. I’m realizing my siblings have no real home training and lack basic respect. I work hard to not blame them for what they haven’t been taught. I find joy at the same time in providing a safe space for them. Goodness though it’s hard being to others what you’ve never received but alas, the fate of the healer I suppose.
Your own

Preference

October 18, 2023
Trying to remember how to forgive and be grateful to those who have caused me harm. They are my greatest teachers, though I pray for more gentle lessons, which I ensure by trying my best to learn and trust my intuition the first time. I will always choose peace, love, and safe spaces. I get it when they say “hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”. I’ve drank that poison. I’m drinking it now, and also healing and actively retraining my brain to stop. It’s an irritating process that requires accountability and moral. Sometimes my ego tries to convince me to match energy. Don’t get me wrong I feel my real feelings and express. but when you know better, you do better, can’t sit in it for too long or it’ll consume you. I used to not mind being consumed, but it gets old when life goes on and you realize suffering is inevitable. Part of life, nature, balance. I vow to not be one of those hurt people that hurts people. Compassion is something one must continue to cultivate. It is a wisdom that contributes to a more positive community…. And now I remember.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world”- Ghandi
The fool

Life’s bargain

Text:
The heavens of womanhood.
Revelations of my souls essence.
Emerging ashes saturated in a deliciously delicate black hole of grit.
You know, the usual.
And you?
