Finding My Feet

First five years spent poor

Beaten, clawed by toxic stress.

A rough start, darling.

Care in their caress

through pain pricked fingers.

Love in the weaving

of comings and goings

Pas de deux He was a mortician. She was a seamstress. They wove stories of coming and going. All the unanswered, the unclaimed, the unknown became secondary. There was a lot of rain across a parched earth and they only saw relief of the end of a dance. But one dance leads on to another and another. The joy is in the twists, the dips always righted.

@ beetlemoses on ig

Empathy

I have laid my hand over the pool of pain

Fingers spread, slow like I'll frighten it

Barely broken the thin skin at the top

Of the water you nearly drowned in

The cold sucked the breath from my chest

And I cried out and stumbled back

Clutching my burning icy hand

I stare at you. How did you survive this?

Does it ever go away? The furious ache?

I'm still gasping for breath.

You shrug. It hasn't so far but you should rest.

I should rest? What about you?

I'm trying. I'm so tired.

Tears gather in your eyes like crescent moons

There isn't enough time in the world.

I lay my new scarred hand on your chest.

Well that is my belief, so thank you for creating something so touching ❤️

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." - Emily Dickinon - Not my belief honestly but it worked for the picture lol.

A special shoutout to LGBTQ+ Mormons and exmos this pride; to you in the closet, sitting awkwardly in sacrament meeting, finding excuses to duck out of homophobic Sunday school lessons, you, wearing a rainbow pin to girl's camp, you out and proud and still attending, enduring side eye from sisters and comments to "maybe tone it down" from your bishop. You, afraid to bring your partner home, you who's only Mormon on Sundays but can't bear to let your parents down (earthly and heavenly). To you who took the bravest step and left the church and your community, and feel like you'll never find a new one. To you who hears "no way you were a mormon!" but are still unravelling the trauma of purity culture.

I see you.

I love you.

It gets better.

sonnet for the uncanonical, 2025

written for two-bees escapril; the prompts are 'sonnet' (week one) and 'apocrypha' (day three). i will admit that this is probably only partially a sonnet; i've never been great with meter, but the rhyme scheme and structure is mostly there! i think. either way, i had fun challenging myself.

As far as animals to be afraid of, deer rank pretty low. From afar, a deer is harmless certainly. Docile, wide eyes, silent staring before they bound away. But if you’ve ever been up close, that likely means you’ve found one trapped. Wounded maybe. Only then will you realize what fear does to a prey animal. If you wander too near, the acrid smell of desperation and deadly will to live is pungent in each flare of its nostrils. Then all of a sudden that deer seems much bigger, and fiercer, and you really ought to back away, but your brain works slower than its instincts, and you’re about to discover that hooves are like rocks and like knives, and those legs are longer and your head is closer than you would ever like. And for a split second, you, apex predator, will understand prey-fear.