• change of state, escapril 2025 anthology

Maybe I shouldn't have looked up too often, molding my being to strain accord with gravity, visioning past the wood only inches away from me, reclined on a bed that housed tragedy and hope. Maybe I shouldn't have beleaguered the hands that would catch me, and maybe the shift—this fall—wouldn't have broken so many bones.

• bad habit, escapril 2025 anthology

I've domiciled in familiarity, in a dawn formed out of retrospect, forming hoops to maintain that warmth, that contentment, that very placement where life seemed to be in balance—an intelligible distinction, a polarity that doesn't necessarily father a threat, an amalgam of sweetened attachment and bitter unfolding

• the mothers who wore black, psyche talks

I do not remember how it felt, how it looked, or how it sounded—the appearance of warmth that didn't burn, as if it wasn't something I cradled in afternoon runs just before thirteen, as if it wasn't mine that I boasted in daydream tea parties. How did it come to this, the arrival at the aftermath's end scene, where dawns bloom uncontrollably, almost too overwhelming to see?

• not knowing, psyche talks

Up where the door is thorned and overlooked, its warmth bitter than the cold, aware of the unfamiliarity, a quite pathetic scene, I find myself knocking, losing fingernails in the keyhole, desperate for something still muddled, for something I've only garnered as a hum, barely anything enough to cause so much affliction—this weight in my head suffocating my body.

• perfect imperfections, psyche talks

They will tear your veiling lashes and keep you up at night. And when they do, come into my haven and I will blanket you in poetry. If the bed rocks you too hard and it spills your jar, grip the grass below you and pour it to me. Pour me the ocean clawing its way out of your eyes. I am whole enough to carry them.