Poetry

The tea is steeped in heavy silences, in the kitchen where the shadows lean, false narratives held the porcelain like a fortress wall, a gatekeeper to all that might have been. Lies have woven the threads of old, familiar stories, of safety found within its narrow sight, while we are tracing maps of desert mesas, and chasing down a different kind of light. For years, the echoes of a stolen history were muffled by the tales chosen carefully to tell, a father cast in ink of false descriptions, a truth locked deep within a silent cell. But blood has a rhythm that refuses silence, and roots can stretch beneath the shifting sand; We’ve found the man painted as a phantom, and we are reaching for his weathered hand. The Land of Enchantment calls across the distance, with turquoise skies and peaks of dusty red, away from every doubt planted here, and every hollow word that was said. You clutch the hem of seasons fast departing, afraid of what the open air might do. But we are breathing in the ...

If you’re waiting for life to award you a prize, A "Happiness Trophy" for opening your eyes, you’ll be waiting quite long—it’s a bitter old birth— 'til the sun grows too large and swallows the Earth. The news is a dumpster fire, roaring and red, the coffee machine sounds like ghosts in the shed. The guy in the fast lane just gave me a sign That wasn't "Peace Sister" or "Everything's Fine." If I let the world dictate the state of my soul, I’d be under my desk like a miserable troll, feeding on dust bunnies, fueled by my spite, Hiding away from the morning’s first light. But instead?  I choose joy. I can hear all the cynics, I see the eye-roll, From the "Daves" of the world who lack any control. Dave clutches his kale with a sneer and a sigh, Looking like someone just spat in his eye. "Must be nice in your bubble," he says with a moan, "ignoring the fact that the world is a loan, With structural cracks and a society falli...

I do not wait for the sky to ask my permission before it breaks, nor do I expect the wind to respect the life I have carefully built. The world screams of endings, of fences leveled and illusions torn away, insisting that chaos is the only truth left. But I am learning to look at the hands reaching through the gray. My miracle is not always the storm turning back at my doorstep. Sometimes, my miracle is the way my heart holds its beat when the walls begin to shudder. It is the stranger who finds me in the rising dark, offering a light I didn’t know I was seeking. I find a blessing in this stripping away. When the roar of the world’s panic finally goes silent in the power quest, I discover the steady rhythm of my own breath— a small, persistent fire that the gale could not extinguish. I am learning that I am made of sturdier stuff than the things I have lost. My grace is found in the morning after: the way I see the light hitting the broken glass and recognize the shimmer of fallen star...

  The Veil The architecture was grand, built of stones I did not quarry and mortar mixed before I was born. I walked the hallways of a history written in someone else’s cursive, believing the walls were solid, believing the view from the window was the only sky that existed. Then came the light— not a soft dawning, but a sharp, clinical glare that turned the stone to paper and the mortar to dust. I watched the pink ribbons drift through the rafters of a collapsing house, and for a moment, the silence felt like the end of the world. It is easy to stand in the ruins and mistake the debris for your identity. It is easy to grow old clutching the jagged edges of a broken story, using the shards to cut anyone who tries to come close. But I have seen the man in the forest, his heart turned to winter, his eyes seeing only the shadow behind every neighbor’s smile. I refuse that inheritance. The veil did not fall to leave me blind; it fell so I could finally see. My faith was never stored in...