Please dont fall in love with me,
it always ends tragically,
because I just seem to be
so unlovable, radically.

I know the things I desire most
are the very things
that will keep destroying me. (Present Tense)

I keep sweeping the same broken glass
out of my mind, out of my heart,
beneath the dusty rug of pain.
Then I pour extra sugar in
and slowly stir my ice cold tea.

A good girl filled with nasty thoughts,
sinful desires, and silly dreams.
(Burn the Witch)
My heart has become an attic,
safe for things I can never throw away.

I dive headfirst into a moon-shaped pool
after someone strangles me in my dreams.
An inherited silence,
darkness and cold –

I think it’s me.

No fig left uneaten,
birdseed stuck in my blouse,
whimsy twirled in my hair,
blue eyes sparkling with liberation.

Each spotted freckle on my nose-
a blessing from the sun
and all its warmth.

Rebirth.
New life.
A new path for me.

There are so many feelings, so many words, so much swirling within my soul.

So loud-

the noise of the unknown.

So much.

I need quiet. At least for a bit.

Calm.

I need calm for a very long bit.

Love lives in me like a low-grade fever,
uncomfortable, yet the warmth is welcome –
a refreshing contrast from the icy blood
flowing through your heart and veins.

Your harsh silence, my gentle invites.
Misleading responses with no intent.
You continue to starve me –
I allow you to bite the hand that feeds.

In this new, scarlet red season,
freshly blown cinnamon
stirs my sorrows, bringing me to my knees,
as you make chrysanthemum promises
of falling petals, brown and crispy.

I am exhausted from living with
tears swelling so easily when I blink.
But with these autumn whiskey blues,
come September – time for rest, for retreat.

So don’t you dare fucking miss me.
I beg you to lay me softly in the dirt,
cover me in checkered corduroy, ashes,
and scarecrow kisses.

Another sigh of no relief
as I greet the moon in the morning.
I’ll stare my jaded eyes into the sky,
hopeful to harvest a heart
fresh and free of the ghosts
that keep planting themselves in mine.

You are not responsible for the karmic patterns another person continues to choose, even when you love them deeply and understand the wounds behind their behavior.

Compassion allows you to recognize another soul’s struggles, but it does not require you to become part of the consequences of their unfortunate conscious decisions.

You can offer love, empathy, and understanding without sacrificing your peace, compromising your boundaries, or abandoning yourself in the process.

Every soul has its own lessons to experience, and sometimes the greatest act of love is allowing someone to take responsibility for what they continue to create.

You are not here to carry another person’s karma at the expense of your own evolution. (AND WON’T)

Return to your center, honor your worth, and recognize that choosing yourself does not mean you have stopped loving them.

You can love someone unconditionally without participating in the patterns they are unwilling to change.

And the way my soul yearns for something –

Something –

completely unattainable,
completely indescribable,
absolutely unearthly,
absolutely incomprehensible.

Leaving my breaths shallow
and a hollow space
where this something is meant to live.

This will swallow me –
this search for something.

This will consume me

Until I’m nothing.

Why is nothing I ask of you
the only thing you bring?

Dinners for your puppy dog,
leaving table scraps for me
never spending time alone,
or texting me sweet nothings.

What do you even know about my life?
Hardly enough for your “future ex-wife”.

Empty words of broken dreams,
Songs in foreign languages
I’ll never hear you sing.

Lyrics filled with hope and romance-
am I a fool misinterpreting things?
If you don’t come, I don’t exist –
Yet there’s poison in each soft kiss.

I stand in your rainshadow
Like the moon in the sun’s afterglow
Our love lives in liminal limerence,
a space between letting go

and
finally being free.

407 to 704.

Interstate 4
to 95,
to 26,
and then 77.

A route I’ve learned by heart
in order to protect my heart.

Because when things become hard,
this is the path I find myself on,
time and time again.

My roadtrip romance began
to escape that first “husband” –
the elopement built on emotional abuse
and manipulative entrapment.

I recentered in a new town,
only to let him follow me there again.

And that time,
after another broke in –
3 excruciating hours of fighting him,
I almost died.
Almost suffocated.

I shouldn’t have been driving
with my throat closing in,
but the more state lines
I saw in the distance,
my sense of safety could begin.

And yet, here I am once again,
having to reopen this last chapter.

Attorney on speed dial.
The same familiar feeling
of drowning.

Yet each time,
I survive.

And a new chapter begins.

I am no stranger
to these feelings.

Until I make another poor decision,
let another shitty man in –

I swear to fucking God,
I’ll never hold the title
of “wife” again.

But there is something healing
in the mountains,
and in my special collection
of lifelong long distance friends.

So this beaten path –
knows we will meet again.

Interstate 77
to 26,
to 95,
and then I-4.

704
to 407.

Time
and time
again.

My anxious attachment will kill me one day.

And I could blame my father, my trauma,

but it is only the fault of my own weakness.

I’m such a fool for the thought of love – full of desperate, useless hope.

I cling to feelings of extreme because everything, anything else,

feels secondary to the ache of wanting.

Cursed with the blessing
to break the chain
of generational trauma,
of generational pain.

My son will never know
the threat of hell
or eternal damnation at the hand of His name.

He will never be forced
to sit quietly
in an stiff, odd smelling pew,
singing songs of praise
to a fictional man.

Memorizing rules and lessons
from a book
that’s used so often as a weapon
to condemn.

Cherry-picking laws
for thee,
but not for them.

He will never know the fear,
the increasing build of anxiety
surging through his body
after the screams begin –

“Get in your room
and wait for me there.
I better not hear a thing
from you until then!”

He will never feel the pain,
the humiliation
of being thrown over my knee,
bare bottom exposed,
tears pouring from his face,
pleading for forgiveness-

“I’m sorry.
I’ll never do it again.”

That shock from the belt
hitting a fingertip
as he tries to protect
his rear end’s soft tenderness.

And then the soreness of his seat
for the next week.

Nor will he ever feel
the rage of my anger,
Or the neglect of throwing him
into his room,
slamming the door
as I scream for silence.

Isolation
for hours,
days at a time,
all because my grown up emotions
feel too big.

Sobs turned silent,
while his eyes burn red,
each new tear
a fresh sting.

Screaming into the pillow
because no one hears his pain.
Self-soothing
until his body finally falls –
exhausted,
depleted of everything.

A peaceful nap.
A moment of calm.
Until he wakes and it begins again.

My son will never know
the pain
of needing the love
that never came.

Have you noticed how teenage boys
and some men –

especially the ones with Peter Pan syndrome –
think pussy is the pinnacle,
the peak of existence,

yet never learn how to speak
to the ones who own them.

And they’ll throw rocks
at women who bed multiple men.

While the ones who are actually pussy
are terrified of creating anything
that resembles a foundation.

But that isn’t a fair comparison.

Because a pussy has more strength
than those childish men.

Disrespecting their mothers
while believing the portal of life
should simply be handed to them.

They want the pleasure
without the woman problems.

The prize without the bitch.

The portal without ever understanding
what it took to create it.

The Florida summer heatwaves always
end in thunderstorms –

born from something quiet and beautiful,
ripening slowly toward ruin.

Bite into it before it spoils.
Beautiful things are already beginning to decay.

Desire is a fruit
best eaten with bare hands.

So I press the bruise.
I twist the knife.

There is something dangerous about wanting.

And I nurse a hunger
that cannot be satiated,

because I wanted you to know.

And I wonder,

Do all the critters I’ve helped along the way
sing my praises to Mother Gaia,
or whisper to the universe
of the grace I gave?

And do my yard birds tweet out reviews
of the bird seed I leave,
the sanitation of their bird bath,
and the quality of seed?

And my murder of crows,
now up to six –
do they send caws of approval
to their brethren hidden where?

And my gang of baby squirrels,
always chasing each other’s tails,
do they gossip to each other
about the peanuts I’ve left there?

Ah, but then again,
I don’t really care.

I’m just happy
they feel safe enough
to stay near.

I once had the perfect lover.

We’d meet every two weeks, barely speaking in between. He drove an ostentatious yellow Corvette. A helicopter pilot, serving in the Army. Huge biceps, strong lips. He had mommy issues, but a wit that could keep me company.

We both knew we weren’t compatible for anything beyond lust, pleasure, desire – a carnal disease.

We’d meet for dinner, catch up, flirt and tease. A caress and a kiss here, an inappropriate hidden touch there. Then we’d race back to his place in that awful, loud yellow car. His hand separating my knees.

His house was just as huge and ostentatious, but it had my dream backyard: a pool overlooking the lake, a hammock swinging beneath the trees.

We christened every inch of it, on multiple evenings.

I think he married some tiny, fit blonde thing. I think maybe they had a kid or are expecting to be. I’m not sure.

But I should call him.

The pediatrician’s office waiting room.

Clinically white walls.

Twenty-two chairs, seven adults, nine children,
two babies, one TV.

Then there’s my son and me.

We enter, sit down in the corner quietly.
He sits in my lap,
anxious at the thought he may need a vax.

About our plans, we chit-chat,
about yesterday evening,
how he’s excited for school,
and how proud I am.

Then I feel eyes hot on my shoulder,
a glare from across the room.

Did our whispered conversation have the audacity to disturb?

I look around, and I notice a pattern.

Not a face looking forward.

Even the kids are shoved into tablets,
each individual obsessed with their screen,
their digital distractions filled with tiny hits of dopamine.

How dare I connect with my child.
Such a thought, obscene.

I wonder what these grown-ups look like to the only other screen-free ones in the room –

the fucking babies.

We must look like aliens to them,
a weird species with small rectangles connected to our limbs.

How fucking sad.

No one knows how to be bored anymore.

We all reach for a screen.

And I can’t judge too harshly, because I, too, fall victim to the escape addiction,
with my tiny handheld computer of infinite knowledge.

I just wish we’d all fucking break free.

My most favorite colors don’t live in the rainbow.

They live in evening sunlight through a glass of sweet tea,
the bluish purple shimmer of freshly fallen snow,
Cherenkov radiation blue,
the magical grey of the Spanish moss laying across the branches of the oak tree,
the sparkle of the reflection of the sun on the waves,
the warm glow from fireflies blinking in a humid summer field at dusk,
the pale pink, purple underside of a thundercloud at sunset,
the nostalgic glow of multicolored incandescent Christmas lights,
the worn yellow of old library pages,
the opal colors trapped inside a soap bubble.

And my favorite, above all  –

the orange of the sun shining through my son’s ears when he was once so small.

The moon has never expected me to remain whole for long.

It understands phases, cycles, transformation.

And beneath this Buck Moon, find me half wild, fingertips pushing against the current, singing silly little songs of anguish filled with tongue-rot romance and wet-bread devotion.

I will no longer apologize for the quiet space my soul requires.

You can never optimize my rage, reduce me to another algorithmic archetype, while artificial intelligence steals literature and our rivers, streams, and fresh waters are drained.

Some days I could sleep all day, dream away the pain.

Are my emotions storms to survive, or merely turbulent seasons of change?

The beat drops.
So do I.

I know I’m not entirely insane.

I wonder,
if I were never to reach out again,
how many doors would slowly close?

And if i were to reach out on a terrible day,
how many more would slam?

And should I disappear without a trace,
never murmuring a word of where I am…

Who would even notice?
Who would give a damn?

I wonder,
do I fear the seal of those doors,
or rather the feeling that I’ll endure behind them?

Abandonment – when my emotions win.
Seclusion – when my anxiety won’t stop again.
Loneliness  – I have only one true friend.
Clarity – I never actually needed them.

When one door closes,
another one opens…
But what about 20 of them?

And well, Mom and Dad – you’ll be ashamed to know that I’ve never stopped crying.

I’m a mother now.

I have grown and birthed a child – from a seed to a human.

And I have learned many things, but the lesson that lingers, the one that hurts the most, is realizing how easy I should have been to love.

Because my son – he is just like me.

Just like I was, before I was told:

You’re too emotional, too distracted, too loud, too hyper, too misbehaved, too messy, too nosy, too bossy, too much.

I see his curiosity. His love for life. His hunger to learn.

I see his mistakes, his messes, his accidents – each an opportunity to teach – not to shame, not to berate, and never to become irate.

And I can’t help but wonder who I might have become if even one grown up had offered me that same grace.

Instead of seeing a child who was “always too much, a problem child… a burden.” I wish just one of them had seen a child who simply needed to be loved.

I have salt in my tears,
seafoam in my veins,
sand-colored skin, speckled
with fragments of tiny shells,
eyes that shift through shades of blue,
an insatiable need to be free.
I understand
the language of the sea.

A mid-June summer day,
and evening finally arrives.
Your skin is still damp
from swimming in the pool all day.

Sun-kissed and cooled
by the caress of a gentle breeze,
dinner is enjoyed outside
in the golden light of dusk.

Corn on the cob, hot dogs,
and ripe, juicy watermelon-
no utensils, only your hands,
while swatting away the pesky flies.

The cicadas scream,
and the crickets and owls join in.
An ice cream truck’s jingle drifts in the distance,
each voice singing its own natural hymn.

What a wonderful evening-
to feel grateful simply to live,
as though it’s summer and I’m twelve again,
in a season filled with memories and friends.

I love the spaces that make me feel small-

Forests where ancient trees tower,
cities where skyscrapers swallow the sun,
ocean shores stretching into eternity,
the vast darkness between the stars,
the mountains where waterfalls become streams.

Each humbling. Each speaking a different truth.

Together they remind me –
the world is far greater than my worries,
my ambitions, and even my own brief existence.

In their grandness, I find perspective,
and in feeling small, I continue my growth.

Even in the empty rooms of my heart,
you will find me dancing.
Bones calcify, and broken clocks stop time,
but the fallacy of crying pretty
becomes factual when tonight’s tears fall.

Blue eyes, dark nights
carry me through the necessary pain.
As these roots tear through my skin,
there is a tenderness in these endings.
In the quietness of my twisted heart,
where even the darkness is friendly.

So I seek out another shadow
and follow this path worn soft with sorrow,
until I fall to my knees,
underneath the umbrella of blooming trees.

I wish I could be 18 again,
so I could never fall in love with him,
never go to that college,
and never confide in that person.

I’d run away sooner,
never, ever support him,
avoid that friendship,
and again, dont fall in love with him.

I’d warn myself of some poor choices
and the permanent impact they make,
I’d forgive my mother sooner
and tell my father to fuck off.

I’d never take that one job
and I’d stay with that friend longer,
I’d visit my people more often,
be more present in each moment.

I’d learn how to love myself sooner,
read more and gain knowledge,
I’d travel everywhere I could,
and hope I never experience this reverie.

Wildflowers by the highways
When sun rays escape through the clouds
The smell of old books
A freshly packed bowl
Sheets fresh from the dryer
A handwritten love letter
Rain drops on hot pavement
A big band orchestra vinyl

A Blue Moon in Sagittarius –
a rare celestial invitation
to zoom out, embrace adventure,
and see life from a wider horizon.

Shed limiting beliefs.
Pursue authenticity.
Step boldly toward the destinations
calling your name.

My truth is my compass.
I aim high.
I trust the path as it unfolds.
I release what no longer aligns
with my highest vision.

Expansion and adventure are my birthright.
My wild spirit is free and untamed.
The arrow of my intention flies true.

Once in a blue moon,
the universe reminds me
just how far I am meant to go.

Like the moon pulling the tide,
or rain nourishing wildflowers.

Like a star carrying a wish,
or roots reaching for their branches.

Like wind dancing with the chimes,
and each sunrise asking for another chance-

The way music awakens memory,
the way coffee invites conversation.

The way candlelight casts a shadow,
and poets sing of heartache.

The way dandelions cradle desire,
and mountains answer with echoes.

Like lovers through a slow dance,
or a garden asking only for patience.

Like nights heavy with secrets,
and lips whispering confessions.

Like love and vulnerability,
distance and devotion.

Like a heart stubbornly full of hope –
and my certain undoing,
Some things seem destined for one another.

Screens, screens, screens.
My tiny handheld screen,
the midsized screen for work,
the larger screen for escape.

Screens in the cars,
in the bars,
at the nail salon,
the coffee shop,
the brewery,
and in the children’s hands-
neck pain and eye strain
before they’re really humans.

Screens for meetings,
screens for menus,
screens for every fucking thing.

Screens, screens, screens,
while somewhere beneath the static,
I scream, scream, scream.

Fifty men, one inbox.
The same lame pickup lines,
the same awkward attempts
to conversate.

Few understand my wit.
Fewer understand my sarcasm.
None reach my depth.
None notice how quietly I drown.

Few would care.
Fewer would stay
once the surface breaks.

Fifty men, one inbox.
One woman constantly desired,
yet somehow
still never truly seen.