To be kin with the trees is to let their roots become your veins. Their branches, your limbs. Their leaves, your lungs. Their waters, your blood. The jungle air is moist on your skin, and you drink it in, every pore enlivened and awake, informed by all that lives. The sun is a gift your … Continue reading Tree Affinity
It's hard to reconcile being wild sometimes, the feral hunger. The seeking eyes, the instincts that lead one to survive. The shapeshifting in twilight when it’s dark enough to see more colors, and Iight enough to illuminate the way forward. Star-kissed riverbeds and spectral skies. Emerald trees and non-linear time. Magenta plumes and lavender moons. … Continue reading Wild Like Me
I used to feel beautiful in the morning, innocense restored and lines smoothed out on my face. Now the lines seem deeper and there is no such thing as innocence anymore. Now I'm only tired and my tissues know it, losing their grip on my bones and sinking like my heart to the bottom of … Continue reading Making Peace with Aging
The fires drove us away when they raged and caged my breath. My family’s home in my lungs with buildings and machines, blood and bones, a million dead dreams and more. We could not have known what was in store for the forests of the world any more than the sea knew she'd be swallowing … Continue reading The Call of Fire
How does She do it? Steal my peace as easily as breathing. Churn my guts at the flip of a switch. Burn me hot to stir me. Turn my favorite colors grey. Pulled away from dreams I cling to as if it will make them real. Detached from my senses, I cannot see or feel. … Continue reading Task Master
If I close my eyes this moment, I could probably sleep forever. Skin on blush satin and bones on feathers. A black velvet blind-fold so light never returns. A tepid tomb for a womb of rest. Body at peace, my spirit could wander to other realms less dense than gravity tethering me so … Continue reading Stardust
Spoken Word Reading: For the Privilege of Living (raw performance just after writing) The nations in our blood rise up to fight the nations in our lungs. A war over our bones: to live or to die. Will we ever see eye to eye? Some of us deny accounts from those on the front lines. … Continue reading For the Privilege of Living: A Pandemic Poem
Tiny robbers everywhere I look. Maybe I should close my eyes. Distractions pull and tug like pretty lights that try to steal my mind. I want to see the colors and shine but at what cost? How much of my heart is lost? A fraction of my breath, just enough so I can’t breathe deeply. … Continue reading Quiet Hours
A hot whip lashes my chest like a demon’s attempt to break my ethereal heart. The gates are closed, but the mark is left on the pearl and I can’t get it off. Perfection is a lie we tell ourselves in order to aspire, because that’s what we’re taught: always reach, always strive. But life … Continue reading Brave Morphling
This hot searing pain in my chest. The contrast of frozen heart against human heat. The unchanging past trying to exist in the fluidity of now. Statues will fall in the current of a river if given enough time. Isn’t it violent to put a flame under ice? Why not let fire be fire without … Continue reading Slow Thaw
