The lassos fly in the air to catch you and pull you back into the pit. “Dance for me,” the captors say, stealing your clothes to replace them with a tunic and leather pads. No sword and shield to arm you. Just straps of sandals on skin tanning in the unyielding sun. Dance for the … Continue reading Song of the Gladiator
Category: Shadow Work
Phantom Companion
There is a shadow of melancholy overlaid upon me like a second skin. I don’t know how to shed it. I could be happy as a Panda in a bamboo forest, or joyful as a Golden Retriever playing fetch with a companion, but always the tinge is there. A constant storm brewing in the cauldron … Continue reading Phantom Companion
Firebird
I built myself up from deep under ground but it isn’t enough to contend with night. The monsters and ghouls cannot bare the light of a new day when their eyes have been sewn shut for ages by their own hands. A needle to pierce the flesh of tender eyelids and turn them hard with … Continue reading Firebird
Floral Heart
This fractured heart is a bane to the sweetness of new love. How can it mend if I can’t let him in? How do I allow him in my shattered spaces, stepping on glass and cutting his hands?How do I stop internal bleeding? Boundaries breached. Blood where it doesn’t belong, robbing my heart of the … Continue reading Floral Heart
Brave Morphling
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
To Bare the Light
All the monsters in the corners of your mind come out to seek the light in my soul. They greet me with a smile when they encounter the shine, and shriek back when the core of love flares.Loveless creatures rage in the face of tenderness, aching from the contrast of softness against their exoskeletons of … Continue reading To Bare the Light
Cup of Life
TRIGGER WARNING: This poem may contain content that brings up unhealed material in those with trauma. Please take care when reading this and make sure you have supportive help to assist in your process when needed. What tragedy to be marked when scars become a part of you, like a different heart or lungs: a … Continue reading Cup of Life
Dream Girl
Engaging with the outside world falls away like shells of walnuts cracked apart for the prize within. Could this be the skin of my serpent soul sloughing off in the violence needed for me to be truly free? To release the dead and dying threads binding me for ages so I may finally live? To … Continue reading Dream Girl
Solar Rival
If you are not afraid, my love, then I am happy for you. If your legs are strong to keep you standing in the fire, the storm, in the shifting currents of dark water, then would you hold my trembling cup? My hands are shaking too much to keep the medicine from spilling and I … Continue reading Solar Rival
Illuminance
Lavender clouds of plasma laced with stars in lilac and blue as I swim inside of you. Your every breath a gift of infusion; your love, your core, radiant as a river of sunlight pouring over purple mountains in the early morning, giving life to all that sleeps. How long did I sleep, Lover? Dreaming … Continue reading Illuminance