Now I lay me down upon the pyre 
Parasocial judgments become my final bed 
My inner critic heats the brand 
Searing the Scarlett letter upon my forehead
Around me stands a clandestine digital jury 
Self-appointed keyboard warriors and drama lovers 
Clutching fiery torches in one hand 
Their costume pearls in the other

Lo, the algorithm gods don’t play 
I have been weighed
Measured
And found morally grey

Oh, how they like their authors canceled 
Steeped in hot takes and slander 
Creative visions villainized 
Character choices criticized 
Beloved prose weaponized 
Every slaughtered sentence damning evidence 
Of how they can't help but read between the lines 

"Does it make you feel special?" I shout
"Claiming the BookTok high ground?
To kindle the flames of my career's death 
With my own pages inked in red?"

Could I have been deemed lawful good, 
If only I'd written a different book?
Alas, I've always been misunderstood... 
Every roll of the dice a critical miss 
My final strike they came to witness 

From their moral grandstand 
The prosecution issues the decree 
Each opinion formed against me prospers 
My sentence blasted on gilded screens 
I'm a literary harlot, the judges jeer
A symbol of their own projected fears

"Light her up!" 
The crowd erupts with vitriolic spew 
"She deserves every one-star review. 
Did you read page seventeen?
She was asking for it
Peddling a plot so obscene!"

What cruel irony
That my heart’s work would become my demise 
Chapter after chapter ignited for my crime 
Of portraying something too close to real life 
I choke down my pride like bitter wine 
Even crying myself a river wouldn't douse the raging fire

Heat nips at my fingers and toes 
The scent of my singed flesh assaults my nose 
This--this is the aroma of defeat 
Death by a thousand pseudo-critiques 
Messy tropes became the ropes that bind
Would that I had not been so precious with what was mine

Yet, I can't help but smile
The joke's on them
I won't wait to burst forth from the ashes 
Because there'll be none from which to rise 
You see, I am not the calm before
I AM the storm
The thunder
The lightning
And I’m taking back my sky

Flip the script with a flick of my wrist
I don't need their wings to fly
A shining Phoenix, I break out 
My laughter tickling the clouds 
As they launch another attack 
Poison darts disguised as "feedback"
"Don't worry, she won't get far,
Just you wait and see."

But their words can't reach me
From up here, it's all just manufactured hate 
I don’t need to ask permission
When I can soar right over the gate

Funny how they never stopped to consider 
I might find my own path to victory
I guess it's like I always say:
Well-behaved stories rarely make history

Doomsday was once a speck on the horizon
Now it barrels toward me like a freight train
As I squirm, bound and gagged, on the track
I relish the final sting of tears on my face

“No one is coming to save us,” I’d warned.
“We’re digging our own graves!”
Yet, humanity choses counterfeit  “progress”
Oblivious to the cyber-prison they’ve made 

Alas, prophets like myself become martyrs
Except this time, history won’t repeat 
Brainwashed souls who lost the war
Just like our conquerors, we become machines

Now I lay me down on the digital chopping block
Offer my flesh as fuel to be burned
(As if I had any choice)
What is a lesson if too easily learned?

“Who needs these fragile bodies anymore?” They said
So, little by little, we become digital
Willfully forfeiting our carbon meat suits
Not such intelligent life, after all

“Never fear! Your mind will be safe!”
The artificial surgeon bot assures me
“You won’t feel a thing!
Lie back, relax, and soon you’ll be free!”
 

You can break my bones
With sticks and stones
But words are my kryptonite
They’re etched into my skin
Literal pieces of my heart on my sleeve
If you rip my words to shreds
I can’t tell if it’s fiction or reality

Giving you my story is sacrifice
Abraham leading his child to slaughter
Killing The prose I birthed laid
On your altar, spill its blood?
Let my blood, sweat, and tears flow
Become the ink for your red pen

Perhaps it’s not you I truly fear
But the possibilities you symbolize
You say, “Rip off the Band-Aid,
Grow a thicker skin.”
Instead, I built a fortress
A tower of self-preservation

If I let down my hair
Will you climb up just to chop it?
Should I let you peer through
The window to my soul?
Are you reverent enough
To give you my heart to hold?

Thanks, but no thanks
I’d rather hide from the masses
Because in what world
Could I bear to divorce
My creations from my worth?

I am the impostor
The syndrome
Haunted by ghosts of mentors past
“Don’t dream too big.”
“Artists make no money unless they
get lucky.”
“God makes some for the spotlight,
and some to scrub toilets.”

Now I scrape hopes and dreams
Off the porcelain bowl
Flushing them away day after day
Scrubbing the seat with my pages
Because what else are they good for?

Yet, I cannot make them STOP
They refuse to go quietly

The ideas
The plots
The characters

They demand to be written
All the while unaware 
That doing so is akin 
To ordering my own execution

Why would I willingly submit
To being skinned alive?
By readers, agents, publishers
Who will break me down
Scatter my bones
Reshape me in their image
Line their wallets
With scraps of my broken heart?

But if they don’t get me first
I fear my words will
They’ll rot me from the inside out
Bury me in a shroud
Woven of my own self-doubt

They won’t actually kill me
I’m no good to them dead
So I let them go
On the winds of fate
To land where they may

After all
There’s a shortage of unique voices in the world
It would be a shame to silence mine

I'm not sure there's such a thing as fate
Or divine intervention
Or synchronicity

But sometimes I wonder…
Could there be some grand puppetmaster?
A clandestine playwright penning the script?

I don’t know,
It’s just so pretty to believe
That maybe we’re all part of something
	Chaotic
		Cosmic
			And breathtaking…
Living threads
Woven together
Into the fabric of time and space
Each one of us
Holding the other 
Lest we U
	         N
                   R
                     A
                      V
                       E
                        L…
Souls magnetized 
Energetically intertwined
In ways beyond our wildest D r E a M s

Wouldn’t that be something?

Is it truth, or just perception?
Who can tell?

All I know is this: 
I have carried great pain
		      Great heartbreak
			       And great shame
Yet, somehow, my path always leads back to 
	Greater
		LOVE

Maybe
It doesn’t need to make sense
Maybe
It’s simply destiny 
Maybe we’re all tethered 
By 
       Invisible strings

I have no proof 
No irrefutable evidence
Still--
Against all odds, I found you

You found me

Perhaps, this is how it was meant to be

I collect identities
Like a secret agent
Trying on personas
Like a kid playing dress-up
And I still haven’t found
My perfect fit 

The dutiful eldest daughter 
The good Christian girl
The quirky bookworm
The weird kid
The tomboy
The Jezebel
The annoying big sister
The faithful employee
The doormat
The blushing young bride
The glowing new mother
The successful man’s wife
The mindful yogi
The burnt out personal trainer
The wannabe author…

The invisible cornerstone 
On which other lives were built
But what about mine?
Who am I, is life worth it
If I am not at your service?
If I stopped giving your problems
Piggybacks and free rides?

I’m sorry. 
I’m going out of business.

This dead horse cannot 
Be beaten back to life
It’s buried with the hatchet 
I used to cut the cord
Please don’t be mad 
I did what I had to do
Lest the demons beneath my skin
Finally turned me inside out

Do I believe in life after regret?
After the final curtain call 
On this one-woman shitshow? 
I can’t say one way or the other 
But I’d rather dance alone 
Than with my ghosted 

Just so you know 
Underneath this facade
Lies a blank slate 
Infinite galaxies yawning awake
A name I no longer claim 

Would a friend
A lover
A daughter
A mother
A student 
A teacher 
A singer 
A dancer 
A creator…
By any other name, still taste as sweet?

No
Nothing tastes as sweet 
As the freedom I gain 
By stripping it all off
Shaking out the shame
Dancing naked under the moon
To the beat of my own drum

They say joy arrives with the dawn 
But I come alive in the dark 
A creature of the night
Paint myself green 
With the ink of the leaves
A monster of your own making
The fragrant reminder 
Of how epically you’ve failed me

There is no more “forgive and forget” 
No more muting my voice 
To protect your guilty ears
I see the way now 
It is time
To go forth into the morn, not gently
But fiercely, completely undone

Look out, world
Something wicked this way comes 

Life gave me an unprecedented amount of lemons, I think
Forgotten laundry piles and empty coffee cups 
Haunt the house like ghosts of my half-baked hopes and dreams 
Curated social media perfection taunts me
Influencers and celebrities filtering reality 
Through cigarette smoke and funhouse mirrors

The world is a dumpster fire, I declare
And perhaps, so am I
But this little fire of mine, I’ll let it shine
Brighter than a thousand Georgia suns
Let my children’s laughter drown out the echoes of self-doubt
Steal kisses from my high school sweetheart at the kitchen sink
As the sun sets over our cozy corner of chaos

Because, as it turns out, these lemons
Make for some pretty sweet lemonade

I am an uncharted territory 
Most never dare to explore
They see still water running deep
Unaware that beneath my surface 
Is the ferocity of a raging sea

I am an entire world 
Encased in flesh and bone
Eyes of emerald oceans
Blood flowing like a crimson river 
Breath like the rushing wind

I am two sides of one coin
Bright as the midday sun
Subtle as scattered moonlight
Expansive as the periwinkle sky
Shrunken as withered leaves 

I am a page of unwritten words
A melody of unsung lyrics
My soul an unfinished canvas
Half-strokes of untapped potential
A palette of unrealized dreams 

I am an enigma, a mystery
A living, breathing charade
So long have I worn this mask
I’ve almost forgotten my own face
Will you stay when I let it fall?

For you see,
I am both everything 
And nothing that I seem 

Death and Resurrection of a People Pleaser

I finally decided to say “when”
Crushed beneath the weight of needs that were not mine to bear
Gasping for air as I secured the oxygen masks on everyone but myself

At last I screamed, “Enough!”
I got out of the kitchen - not because I can’t take the heat
But because it’s burning to the ground
And I’m tired of putting out fires I didn’t start

When the self-inflicted guilt creeps in
I run like I’m late to my own wake
Waving the proverbial white flag that becomes my burial shroud 
Or rather, a silken cocoon

The old me dissolves, skin shedding
Pieces of my broken spirit shifting, rearranging
In a final act of resistance

Don’t send flowers - this isn’t a funeral
It’s a metamorphosis

This is  poem I wrote first based off a prompt I found on Threads. This week, I haven’t had the energy to write much so I decided to share this piece. It’s an older one of mine, but it has a lot of emotion behind it. It is a reflection on letting go of a toxic friendship. 

You painted me as the villain 

In unflattering strokes of gray

Because my kaleidoscope color

Made you feel some kind of way



I called you up to apologize 

Pretended I was the one to blame 

You weren’t mad, just disappointed 

Made me a pawn in your shrewd game



You wove tales of my malicious deeds

Proclaiming that you had the receipts

But the evidence was planted 

Homegrown in your garden of deceit



And I know you think you’re the victor 

But the truth is that I let you win

My final blow was to keep my peace

While bitterness slowly wears you thin

There’s a common misconception in this world 
That magic is only found in fairy tales and fables.
But what if I told you that magic is alive and well, 
Rippling just below the surface 
Of the ordinary and - dare I say - mundane?

If you’d like to see evidence for my outlandish claim, 
Take a look at this non-exhaustive list 
Of the tiny enchantments I glimpse every day:

That first sip of coffee in the morning
A smile from a stranger 
Relatable memes from a friend
Sunlight warmly caressing my face
Solo karaoke sessions while sitting in traffic
Weathered pages of a well loved book
That fresh, earthy scent after the rain
Blood pumping through my veins as I lift heavy things 
Grocery store flowers in a cheap vase on my kitchen windowsill
Frozen pizza on family movie nights
The laughter of my children echoing off the walls of my messy home 
The ocean blue depths of my husband’s eyes
That rush of exhilaration when his lips meet mine 
The feel of cool sheets against my skin as I slide into bed next to him 
Falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat and our shared breath

So as you can see, there’s magic to be found in the most routine of days,
In the people, places, and things we take take for granted.
Whimsy glimmers in those sacred liminal spaces - 

            the pause between inhale and exhale
            the hazy lull between sleeping and waking
            the moment between what was and what's next

So slow down, have a good look around.
Take your time, as I have found 
If you blink, you might miss 
The everyday magic 
Hiding in our midst.