lyra moon's poetry

there is a stranger living under the throat waiting to pull the cord
the mirror reflects a silhouette that belongs to everyone and no one at all
write down the sound your parent makes when they are deciding whether to love you
you have known that sound since before you had a word for it

a sudden terror moves through the stomach like wild water breaking through stone
you burn the silk hangings down while you are still standing on the woven mat
and then weep at the door because no one came to drag you out
the body remembers every rule it was never told out loud

the afternoon becomes a ledger of small cruelties you wrote yourself
you scatter your belongings across the floor trying to locate an identity
spending money you do not have or driving too fast toward the mountain pass
anything to fill the hollow well that grows deeper after lunch

there is a hypervigilance that never allows the eyelids to close
you press glass into your own palm just to confirm you are still awake
and you look at the person across from you and wonder why they haven’t fled
the hollow has a circumference you know because you dug it yourself one apology at a time

you sit on the edge of the mattress with your arms wrapped tight around your waist
so exhausted from destroying every small safety you built with your hands
so exhausted from being the only storm in a house made of rice paper

somewhere beneath all of this is a child who learned to read a face before she could read a word
who still checks the weather in someone else’s eyes before she trusts her own sky
you were taught that love is a test you can still somehow fail

if you became the shape they kept asking for
pruned back before you could grow in your own direction
trained flat against a fence you never chose
would that finally be enough

you practiced in the mirror, in the car, in the pause between two sentences at dinner
you were handed a shape and told it was good
it did not fit
you stayed anyway

you built a room inside yourself for everything they would not accept
you do not remember when the hollow became the only room you knew how to live in
you only remember thinking if you carved out enough of yourself there would finally be room for their pride to move in

there wasn’t

there is only the shape of a child still standing at the edge of the mattress
still asking the question into the dark
the way you will maybe always ask it

are you proud of me yet

—lyra moon (i kept carving until there was room enough for someone else’s pride, and still no one moved in)
august 26, 2026

you toss your matches into the dry brush of midnight
and ask me why the air is turning to smoke
when i hand you a cup of cooling water
you tell me i am trying to drown you
you turn my softest stillness into a rusted cage
and call me a warden for staying near the door
i am trying to shield your small flame from the gale
while you tell the storm where to hit me hardest

you weave a rope out of every honest word i give you
and ask why i am choking when you pull it tight
you bleed into the river and curse the water for turning red
you shatter the compass in your own two hands
and scream that i have led us both into the deep dark
i sit in the shadows of your sudden tides
watching you turn every green and living leaf
into a handful of ash you can throw in my eyes

i am howling beneath the ice of my own skin
i am tearing my fingernails on the iron of your fear
i stayed awake to keep the salt from reaching your eyes
and you used the tide to pull me under
you tear the roof off our shelter to prove it can rain
and then curse my shadow for not keeping you dry
i gave you every drop of clear sky i had left
and you called the stillness a weapon

i love you like a tree loves the lightning that splits it in two
i love you until my veins feel like dried roots snapping underfoot
i love you through every silent midnight trial where you name me the storm
i am begging you to see that the forest is burning down around us both
i wanted to be the soil that held you steady
i wanted to be the earth where you finally stopped running
and instead i am just the ground you dig up to build your own grave

—lyra moon (i was never the storm, i was only the ground you needed to destroy)
august 25, 2026

for years i have carried the child i was
like a pocket full of broken glass
learning to bleed without making a sound
swinging between loving someone like a religion
and tearing them down to keep from being left behind
i drive too fast into the dark just to feel the road
waiting for the drop that always comes

every friendship feels like standing on thin ice
a sudden shift in the air and i am already mourning
the way they will inevitably walk away
my chest is an empty room where the light dies quickly
and the anger arrives like a house on fire
uninvited unpredictable burning everything down
until i am only ash and a ghost sitting in my own lap

standing at the edge of the lake this morning
the storm clouds were hanging like heavy wool
a dark ceiling threatening to collapse
and i recognized that suffocating gray
it felt like the inside of my head
a place where nothing tender survives for long
where every sunrise feels like a false promise

then the overcast skyline split open
not a gentle sun but a blinding shaft of gold
striking the tall glass spires through the dark
it hit the cold brown water and made it burn
turning every jagged wave into a spill of diamonds
a sudden reckless beauty rising straight out of the gloom
holding the entire lake in a blinding quiet hold

and something in me caved under the weight of it
because the light didn’t wait for the clouds to clear
it just poured right through the center of the storm
meaning maybe i don’t have to be fixed to be illuminated
maybe the magic isn’t something i lost in the trauma
maybe it was just waiting under the heavy weather
for me to look up and let it hit the raw parts of me

i am still scared of the dark and the dropping temperatures
i am still terrified of the people i love leaving me behind
and tomorrow the emptiness might come back to claim the room
but this morning the city was a sanctuary built of fire and cloud
and for the first time in as long as i can remember
i am standing on the shore with tears cutting through the salt on my face
watching the light drown the dark and believing i might survive this

—lyra moon (we don’t have to stop bleeding for the light to find us whole)
august 24, 2026

the pool is cold enough to hold a face
still and the throat is dry enough
to take the shape of whatever sound
just left the woods

i am looking at the water
i am listening to the rock

turn away you said
or i said
and the cave gave it back
as an arrival

to love a thing that only moves
when you move
is that the surface or the bottom
the hunger is the same
we sit by the edge of ourselves
and wait to be told
who is thirsting and who is the well

if i touch the glass the water breaks
if i touch your hand the voice breaks

but look the ripple is a circle
returning to the center
the second voice is the only one
that stays to keep the first company

we are drinking from the same mouth now
we are saving each other
by becoming the sound of the water
falling into the stone

we turn our backs to the fire
to watch the shadow of a wing
pass across the stone
and argue over which of us is the bird

—lyra moon (an echo isn’t a mock, but proof the dark was lonely enough to answer)
june 24, 2026

others spill into the river without looking down
they trace no path they simply enter
a stumble becomes a low sweet sound
the world keeps opening for them like a door with no lock

i once let myself be carried too
before i learned what the current takes

i held your hand when you were still learning to walk
i poured my strength into your fragile steps
and watched you grow brave enough to step away
into arms that were not mine

now you look past me
like a room you used to live in

to carry someone to the threshold of their joy
only to be left outside the heavy door
is a grief that has no place to lay its head

so now i stand at the edge measuring every heartbeat
like a spent coin
afraid that to share it is to lose it again
afraid to let another touch what i carry

they link hands and give their breath to strangers
and find it multiplied
i hoard mine in the dark
whole and utterly alone

i watch the whole dance turn without me
a single shadow
held still by the longing for a flawless song

my chest a mirror trapped in darkness
witness to warmth it cannot keep

—lyra moon (love that fears breaking sits at the feast and starves)
august 22, 2026

when you look for the lantern in somebody else’s hands
you spend your whole life chasing shadows in the dark
begging a single person to hold up the sky
and calling them the sun while you freeze in the mud
you swear the magic lives only in their lungs
and without them the room flattens into salt and dust
you sit in the wreckage convinced you are utterly abandoned
believing no one else carries enough blood or grace
to warm the hollow places in your chest

we carry the weight of every burning sorrow
until our own ribs feel like dry branches waiting to snap
we build houses out of old grief and talk to ghosts
forgetting that one human was never built to be a whole temple
a therapist’s patient witness sitting with you through the heavy hours
a partner’s steady palm resting against your shaking back
a friend who sits on the floor beside you while you sob
a room full of kind strangers lending embers to your hearth
offering pieces of a heat you were never meant to generate alone

for the magic was never something they created out of nothing
they were only a piece of glass catching what was already yours
the wonder you worshipped in them was your own soul aching to be named
for loving yourself is the hard spade that turns the dirt back into gold
it unearths the stubborn seed that refused to die in the dark
and proves that healing is a solitary birth cradled by a crowd
we need the hands of the living to pull us from the ditch
so we can learn how to stand in our own skin

when you finally hold your own bruised edges without flinching
the whole world splits open like a raw late-summer peach
you realize the miracle was always your own pulse waiting to be heard
you feel the bright heat you spent years hunting for in strangers
humming right behind your own ribs
and your chest reaches toward the morning
knowing that loss leaves a permanent mark upon the floor
yet the air is still thick with untamed mercy

and when you pass that spark to another tired traveler
when you teach them that they too are worthy of the feast
they learn to dig into their own earth to find the light
and you see that we are all just fragile guides for each other
carrying one another through the grief and back to the porch
where the heart heals in the collective noise of the living
and the whole bruised world begins to mend
one soft sacred breath at a time

and so you learn to walk through the world gently
watching the morning light spill across the plain kitchen floor
listening to the birds sing without needing to understand their song
knowing that simply staying alive is its own quiet revolution
and every time you choose to love the hands that carry you
the grace you thought was gone forever
comes quietly walking home

—lyra moon (you were always the light you thought you lost)
august 21, 2026

i am trying to assemble my hands in a dark room full of arguments
watching them stack their clean choices like clear glass on a high shelf
they possess such precise proofs for why they had to bruise me
such seamless explanations for the hunger that made them take everything
and i am left holding the fractured pieces of a truth that keeps shifting shape
wondering if my own eyes are lying about the freeze in the air

every time someone speaks their small needs turn into a solemn script
a holy sentence that shifts the space while i am still inside
one has a reason for their rage and another has a reason for their distance
and they look at me with the terrifying clarity of the completely innocent
asking me to agree to the exact dimensions of my own erasure
telling me that to doubt their goodness is to destroy the day

my heart is a bleeding mouth begging not to spoil the space
i scrub the cupboards because if i stop moving my fingers
i will have to admit that everyone i love carries a subtle hidden blade
and they use it so softly so sensible so full of sweetness
that i am supposed to thank them for the tears
i am supposed to apologize for leaking onto the rug

it is the intelligence of it that makes me want to die
the way they turn a betrayal into a balanced necessity
until i am standing in my own body feeling like an intruder
begging to believe what my own skin already senses
i am so tired of being outthought by the people who claim to protect me
i am so afraid that if i stop believing them i will be completely alone

i am screaming under the surface where no one can hear the tone
because if my grief is loud they will call it a weapon
if my panic is visible they will call it a decision i made against them
i just wanted a place where my pain did not need to prove its right to exist
i just wanted to be held by someone who did not first calculate the cost
and now i am looking at my own reflection and i do not recognize the face
asking if i am the monster for feeling the teeth before they bite

—lyra moon (a mind unraveling inside the pristine perfection of someone else’s innocence, learning that the most violent thing a person can offer you is a perfectly reasonable explanation)
august 20, 2026

we are fragile vessels
    passing light between us
        hand to hand
            heart to heart

rejection once a shield
    now dissolved into understanding
        each gesture of kindness
            a quantum entanglement of souls

we do not simply give
    we become the giving
        expanding like cosmic breath
            soft and infinite

wounded parts of ourselves
    recognize wounded parts in others
        and in that recognition
            healing blooms

love is not a transaction
    but a living current
        flowing through human veins
            connecting strangers
                to strangers who are not strangers

vulnerability … our truest strength
    acceptance … our deepest medicine
        empathy … our universal language

we spiral
    not in circles
        but in ever-widening rings of connection
            touching more
                becoming more

—lyra moon (when the empty cup forgets its edge, the tea and the sky share the same temperature)
august 20, 2026

shaving oil on my shins looks like a slick little river or a sunlit oil slick on a plastic toy boat in a steamy porcelain pond

i balance on one foot like a sleepy bird sliding a four blade razor through gold listening to the subtle quiet scritch of steel shearing away yesterday

there is a slick science to smooth legs a soft balance of angles and warm water to keep from leaving pink dots on the bath mat though bleeding is just what skin does when you try to change its nature in a hurry

underneath the slick gold is the muscle that learned to stride by mirroring the heavy footfalls of adults who never learned how to carry their own rage gently

we learn to flinch before we learn to speak taking on the strange survival traits of people who built walls and called it safety

i rinse the four tiny blades under the tap and watch the dark prickles float away into the drain like little iron filings from an old magnet that finally lost its pull

how hard it is to unlearn the quiet armor we put on when we were small the hyper vigilance that taught us to watch every door and check every shadow

i drag the steel over the curve of my knee scraping away the old stress that sits like grit under the surface trying to strip off the heavy inherited weight that never belonged to me in the first place

i rub more oil into the fresh tender raw skin feeling the cold air hit what used to be a shield

and then tomorrow morning i look down and see the tiny dark shadows rising through the skin again pushing back up like weeds through sidewalk cracks

and the morning after that they are longer still as if every bad habit every ghost from the house i grew up in every fear of never being enough has crept back while i was sleeping

and a wave of panic hits my throat because no matter how many times i sit in this tub no matter how careful i am with the blade the dark shadows return the old ghosts return the old instincts twitch in my hands like bad electric wiring

and it feels so desperate and exhausting to keep fighting the same body the same ghosts every single morning holding a piece of sharp steel and wondering why the skin won’t just stay clear why the old pain won’t just leave

but as the hot water runs over my trembling hands a subtle quiet stillness settles in my chest and the tears finally fall and mix with the golden oil on my knees

because the magic was never in making the shadow disappear forever but in the mercy of coming back to tenderly care for myself again and again

the routine isn’t a sentence it’s a sanctuary a soft sacred rebirth where i wash away what was left behind and gently hold the person i am becoming

bless the four small sharp edges bless the routine that brings us back to ourselves bless the soft breathing person sitting in the dark weeping and learning to forgive the hair for growing

—lyra moon (the mirror holds no memory of the dust it wiped away only the hand that sweeps the floor learns the weight of the mountain)
august 19, 2026

i stand in the corridor with wet hands
watching two connections bend toward each other
i kept their names under my tongue like salt
believing love could expand without a ceiling
i built a small sanctuary out of our freedom
only to watch them step inside without me

the shame is a cold needle under the skin
when i see them form an orbit in the shallow light
a spectator to an intimacy i bled over
listening to them recast my longing as a burden
and my open heart as an encroachment
until my own freedom feels like an exile

they named my grieving a flawed perception
this ache that was only ever a desperate prayer
this soft monstrous wishing to be chosen in the room
and the shame is heavier than the ruined body
because how do i navigate an open door
i was only ever allowed to watch from outside

i collapse inward beneath the weight of my own skin
not because wanting them both was a sin
but because abundance still leaves a void when you are left behind
and i would have stretched my own heart into a universe
if it kept me from standing in the cold
begging to be tethered

—lyra moon (a soul stranded in an ocean of infinite room, discovering that even in a world without walls, one can still be left outside in the cold)
august 18, 2026