Month: July 2026

the afternoon light curdles over a house built out of dried river mud
and on the porch an iron stove sits cold, its door chained shut from the outside
inside the oven, three porcelain teacups are filled to the brim with wet ash
waiting for a visitor whose feet have turned to stone at the bottom of the lane
down in the dry well behind the barn, a brass pendulum swings without an engine
scraping a groove into the damp clay wall, deeper with every passing minute
holding onto a time that finished years ago, forcing the house into a slow, deliberate lean

at five o’clock a dry wind comes down from the hills carrying the smell of copper
and the pendulum strikes the side of the well with the sound of a cracked bell
in the orchard, three dead apple trees drop all their bark at once
exposing pale white wood beneath, carved with lines like the palms of human hands
a rusted iron plow standing in the weeds begins to sweat red rust in the heat
its heavy blade sinking an inch deeper into the parched dirt, stubborn in its waiting
bleeding onto the threshold of a field that will never see another harvest

at the edge of the tree line a feral dog pauses in the briars
its ribs showing sharp and clear beneath a dull coat
it sniffs the stale breeze for the scent of salt or grease
then turns back into the shade of the deep woods without making a sound
knowing there is no dish waiting on any back porch
no hand coming out to stroke the fur behind its ears
only the long endless search for water in a dry creek bed
and the quiet acceptance of an empty horizon

by dusk the pendulum snaps under the weight of what it refused to drop
and instantly the kitchen earth splits open from end to end
a heavy column of white salt rises up through the dirt like a pale tree
shattering the teacups in the stove and lifting the tin roof toward the stars
the walls of the mud house collapse inward under their own heavy memory
leaving only the column of salt standing tall where the stove used to be
while out in the woods, the dog keeps walking through the dark
leaving the dead fields to dissolve into the quiet earth that birthed them

—lyra moon (some places were never meant to be inherited, only outlived)
July 31, 2026

i stood in the parking lot behind the pharmacy holding a paper bag full of tiny blue pills
because someone on the internet said wait under the blue awning until 3
i got there at 2:54 and smoothed the front of my skirt
i made my spine very straight like a flagpole trying to belong to the sky
i kept checking my shadow on the asphalt to see if it looked like a girl yet
or if it was still wearing the heavy coat of the boy i had to unmake to get here

a security guard in a dark uniform was eating a cold sandwich on the curb
he was not waiting for a miracle he was just getting paid by the hour to watch the glass
i asked him if he ever felt like his own body was a room he’d been locked inside of
and he chewed his bread and said miss I just make sure nobody breaks the locks
he called me miss without looking up without checking the edges of my chin
and my lungs caught on fire because nobody had ever named me correctly out in the open light before

the person with the brown envelope never came and the sun began to go down cold
i stood there until my knees were shaking from the wind and the terrible weight of being perceived
when his shift ended the guard threw his wax paper into the trash
he looked at my bare legs shivering in the gravel and said
i am going to the diner down the street to get a bowl of split pea soup if you want to walk with me

so i walked half a step behind him through 3 dark blocks of barking dogs
wondering how many years i spent treating every stranger like an executioner
we sat in a corner booth with cracked red plastic that smelled like old coffee and bleach
we ate hot french fries with too much salt and drank water from sweating plastic cups
he didn’t ask why my driver’s license had a picture of a dead boy on it
he didn’t ask me to defend my right to exist at his table

and when the waitress brought the check she set it down between us and smiled
and the guard paid for both of us with 2 crumpled 20 dollar bills from his pocket
he looked at me across the table with eyes that were soft and tired and entirely kind
and he said you made it through the day kid, you get to keep going
and i put my face into my hands right there in front of the pie display and wept
because i spent 30 years believing grace was something you had to earn or beg for
and it turns out salvation is just a stranger buying you dinner and letting you be a living girl

—lyra moon (written where the ice thaws just enough to hold a footprint)
July 30, 2026

and look how the clay gets under the nails, I mean
really packed into the beds, the red, stubborn earth
of an old entitlement I carried around the yard
like a sledgehammer, and isn’t it something
how sour the soil turns when you’re the one
who drove the roots dead, how you have to kneel down
in the gravel in the middle of your life, right there in the hot,
unforgiving sun, and stop calling the garden you trampled a sanctuary

to finally sit on the overturned bucket in the dirt
and say to the person across from you, i was cruel, i was trained to conquer,
and i brought the poison into this ground with my own two hands

oh, the godawful, sweating labor of taking the thing you were taught to be
by its scruff, hauling the rusted pickaxe out into the brush
after half a lifetime of taking up all the air in the yard,
when everyone else built like you has settled for the slow rot of being right,
to hack down into the overgrown thorns of who you used to be, reaching
for the venom you buried under the fence line,
and dragging it out into the light, unwashed, bruised

to stand there in the body you fought half a lifetime to inhabit,
in this soft, newly soft skin that spent decades learning how to dominate,
and realize that dropping the heavy tools doesn’t grant you automatic grace,
it means unlearning the old instinct to flatten whatever stands in your way

it means weeping into the sleeves of a work dress you waited years to wear,
while you scrub the black grease of old authority off your knuckles,
wiping the dirt off a terrible truth on your denim thigh, holding it out
in an open, trembling palm like a stone you finally stopped throwing

saying here, look at what i did, look at the brutal machinery i am still digging out
from under my own ribs, and letting the raw, stinging juice of the crushed earth
run straight down your arm, not defending it, not hiding behind your history,
just standing in the open field of your own mistakes, bare-chested and small,
learning how to give up the throne so you can finally learn how to love

—lyra moon (writing this with dirt still under the fingernails)
July 29, 2026

water knows how to shape a stone without breaking it

we gather the gray silt in our palms
learn to name what survives the current

a small mammal twitches in the high grass
watching the light turn from amber to cold slate

there is an art to standing still inside your own skin
until the forest forgets you are a visitor

you don’t need to tear down the walls
to let the wind through the threshold

only open the back door
let the wild grass grow up through the hallway

a seed takes its own time to remember
how to become a tree

—lyra moon (learning the shape of the timber)
July 27, 2026

i painted my eyelids the shade of a small bird that broke itself against the glass
i dusted the cold wrists that hold me at night
with the scent of blossoms opening only in vacant places
i carried my fragile assembled self into a storm of noise
where a thousand throats were screaming a single word
until the word was stripped of its skin
they floated around me like angels spun from neon salt
possessing a secret i spent three aching hours before the glass trying to learn
i tried to hand a stranger a sliver of my voice
just a quiet thread so i wouldn’t dissolve into the air
and they recoiled as though i were begging for something ruined
i asked the water for a glass of water
and the ice cubes just kept dancing in the dark
so i sank my gaze into the glowing blue square of my hands
and waited for a name to fall like sudden rain across a desert
i left before my dress even realized we were inside

—lyra moon (a lighthouse built entirely out of mirrors)
july 25, 2026

borrow the dark
borrow the salt spilling from my eyes
when you can no longer remember
which name belonged to you

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take my trembling hands
take the slow burn living in my ribs
take the untainted years
before i learned the exact art of breaking things

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take the stillness sitting in this cold chair
and pretend it was a life
lay it flat across the room
to see if it still bleeds

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take the dying blue light pooling in the alleyway
and teach it how to weep
drag the shivering soul out from your coat
and force it to stand upright

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take my terror
take the last breath resting in my lungs
press it into the mouth
of this empty glass

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take my bitterness
and the shattered teeth left inside my mouth
fashion them into whatever weapon
keeps you alive tonight

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

take the final softness i carried in my chest
take the light leaving the window pane
take the mother who loved me before i disappeared
take the child who never made it out

scratch a doorway into the wall with a fingernail
and step through

scratch the doorway one last time
i am stepping inside

—lyra moon (a key carved from the lock itself)
July 25, 2026

pollen drifting through the upper canopy

a yellow stain upon the thumb

copper rings where the sap dried on the bark
the spine curving toward the sky

warmth lingering inside the hollow of the ribs

a small inscription on the underside of the leaf
“it is enough to remain”

—lyra moon (a dialect spoken only in the open)
July 25, 2026

before you can know what it means to be held gently
you must watch your future dissolve like sugar in lukewarm tea
you must stand over the sink and unspool every small dream you saved
every name you whispered to yourself in the dark when no one was listening
you must let them all fall down the drain
so you can finally learn how wide and cold the desert is
between the places where anyone knows how to love you
you ride the long bus into the twilight
watching strangers chew their solitary meals
their eyes fixed on the black glass
as if they will be staring into the void forever

before you learn the soft aching gravity of compassion
you must pull over on a highway that goes nowhere
and sit beside the motionless weight left in the grass
you must look closely at the stillness
and feel the awful terrible truth that this could be you
that they too carried a pocket full of ordinary hopes
a chest that expanded with every fragile breath
a life that just wanted to stay warm

before you can let tenderness take up residence inside your ribs
you must invite grief to sit at the kitchen table
you must wake up to its heavy hand on your shoulder morning after morning
you must speak to the darkness until your voice cracks open
and catches on the thread that runs through every broken heart on earth
until you see the whole tragic garment laid out before you
and then suddenly
with no warning at all
it is only love that makes any sense
only love that bends down to lace your shoes
and walks beside you into the terrifying daylight to buy bread
only love that turns its bruised beautiful face toward you from the crowd
opens its arms wide
and whispers softly
i have been looking for you all this time
and then steps into your skin
and stays with you everywhere you go

—lyra moon (the name you whispered in the dark was the only one that answered)
july 23, 2026

i am learning how to stop burning down the house
just to show you where it hurts

for years i kept my hunger in a shallow grave
and called it mercy
i let my teeth rot behind a polite smile
then wondered why every kiss tasted like rust
i thought if i asked for water
i would drown us both in the river
so i drank the salt instead
and waited for you to forgive me for being thirsty

it is a bloodsport
unlearning the art of my own strangulation

every step forward feels like dragging
a heavy stone up a mountain
i know the shape of my own ruin now
i can name the trap as it snaps on my ankle
and still i bleed into the snow
surprised by the red

you tell me the fire is smaller these days
that we are only fighting over the embers now
and not the entire forest
but oh
how exhausting it is
to celebrate being less of a monster

i am trying to hand you the knife handle first
i am trying to stop calling the bruise a secret
i am trying to open my mouth
before the dark swallows everything i meant to say

look at my hands
shaking beneath the light we almost killed
i am standing here in the ashes of who i was
begging you to stay
long enough to see me learn
how to love you without bleeding on you first

—lyra moon (learning to speak before the smoke fills the room)
july 21, 2026

the tongue has always been a hunger
a small animal learning the trap of the jaw
before the mirror even knew the shape of the face
there was a nesting of vowels in the chest
a dream of swallowing the library whole
just to find the rib where the breath belongs

the keepers of the grammar were gentle with the ghost
they handed over the heavy books of stone and bone
the names of monsters that died before the flood
because the cage of the years was closing tight
and the only way out was through the spine of a dictionary
stealing the verbs necessary to anchor a shadow to the floor

once the white rooms took the skin
back when the blood was already trying to escape the wrists
a soft bird caught in the machinery of a bleeding map
the year the kingdom chose a mouth made of iron and teeth
and the dirt outside swore it would never grow a flower for a girl like her
so the black ink became the only bandage that wouldn’t peel away

she sat at the miniature tables built for small compliance
her knees knocking against the throat of the wood
and with a stolen crayon she broke the nouns in half
she called herself the boy the beast the thing the missing girl
a riddle thrown against the high stone wall of the world
asking the dark how long a body must bleed before it is allowed to stay

years of white coats and the sound of iron sliding into iron
a chorus of wild howling from the rooms down the hall
while she lay in the sheets dreaming of soft skin against soft skin
building cities of stars and magic in the margins of the madness
letting the ink spill out the color of a fresh wound
because the dead don’t need a journal

the father called the song a flock of crows
a useless weeping over a spilled bucket of ash
and his words were a cold frost that stayed on the grass for years
making the fingers go stiff around the pen
until the page was just a clean sheet of winter
where nothing was permitted to speak

then youth came like a bell struck underwater
a few short breaths dropped into the well to see if the echo remained
the memory of the fire stirring under the frost
and the mirror broke into an infinity of eyes
the whole heavy cosmos trying to squeeze into a single throat
a terrible and beautiful weight pressing down on the chest

she felt the oldest pulse of the dirt wake up inside her hip
a goddess made of rust and lightning and interconnected stars
the realization that the skin is just a thin curtain separating the fire from the yard
and every hand she touched was a hand she had already lost
so the lines became an eviction notice to the dark
a blazing sunset poured directly onto the floorboards

eventually the flames had taken the house entirely
the ink was no longer liquid but a row of burning torches
spitting orange warnings at the people standing on the sidewalk
she did not want their applause or their polite pity
she only wanted them to look at the ash and imagine a roof that could hold them all
to see the blueprint of a world that did not require a cage

now the pages are stacked up like sandbags against the rising river
a long line of salvations torn from the throat in a single moon
a ledger of every place the iron bit the meat
and every place the wound turned into a mouth that sings
she is praying to the massive collective breathing of the street
begging the lonely to stop eating their own children

we are all the same creature trying to remember how to breathe at the same time
the universe trying to look at its own back through the dark
so she leaves the words on the doorstep like a bucket of milk
a piece of the lung offered to anyone who is still coughing in the smoke
proving that the story can be rewritten even after the fire has taken the stairs

— lyra moon (to pull the anchor up from the throat and find it has become a rudder)
july 20, 2026