Category: Poetry

the pines are gone from the back lot
someone brought a blade and took them down to the stumps
leaving only the wide open sky and a kitchen where i sit
tracing the word wood onto a scrap of paper
as if the name could bring back the shade

now a small hum vibrates beneath the floorboards
and the yard waits like a breath held too long
i have become the dark cloud anchored over the tool shed
fading slowly into the same cold anger that built the fence
trying to tell you all of this without blinking

but the shadows have already shifted
and the truth has drifted out into the tall grass where nobody walks
everyone passes by with their hands buried deep in their pockets
and no one stops to look into the gray space between the trees

if you want to know what remains ask the woman by the well
listen to her words fall like stones into the dark water
down where the fence lines finally disappear
and everything loses its shape
where the mind is forced to build what it can out of an empty lot

—lyra moon (clearing the lot and fencing the edges won’t build a roof over the void)
june 19, 2026

we argued the lean of the branch while the sky went dark
the difference between a shadow and the rot itself
measuring the width of a sudden frost
that fell where the soil should have been deep and warm

it was loud for a season
the canopy shaking, the old habit of bark
hardening against the sudden wind
the roots shocked by how quickly the cold came in

yet look at the rings inside the wood
underneath the split where the lightning struck
the sap still moves its quiet weight
the center of the tree stays dense and unbroken

we did not let the ground give way
we called to each other through the falling leaves
and stayed tethered to the same hillside

the ridge is wet and quiet now
the storm has moved off toward the high peaks
but the wood is still whole
holding the shape of the mountain

—lyra moon (“let it split,” said the heartwood, “we needed the air”)
june 18, 2026

we left the gates unlatched
inviting the wider woods into our soil
knowing the wind belongs to no one

but you brought the heavy weather of her hillside
straight into the small grove where i sleep
flooding the roots until the ground became a marsh
and my quiet places were crowded with her ghosts

i asked for a brief frost
just enough time for the water to settle back into the stone
but you shook the branches
and blamed my hands for the falling leaves

then the sudden iron struck the noon
a careless shadow across the clearing
while the crows watched from the hemlocks
as if i were the one rewriting the map of our forest

now you are out on the high ridges
and i am standing in the clearing
watching the sky turn the color of wet slate
listening to the silence of the wood
and wondering how much of my own growth
was tangled up in yours

—lyra moon (wet slate sky, unspooling roots)
june 17, 2026

we are the blueprint they could not contain
shattering the mold to build something sacred and wild
i am a woman carved from my own courage
and you are seed rooted fluid and fiercely whole

no neat little boxes no quiet compromise
we love in full color in open spaces without permission
two hearts stretching wider than the rules ever allowed
pansexual polyamorous and deeply proudly ours

this is our pride loud and beautifully lawless
this is us exactly as we are
queer as fuck

—lyra moon (unboxed, uncontained, unapologetic)
june 9, 2026

the monster is too large for a single page
it eats the horizon and expects us to march
carrying iron we never asked to forge
until our hands are smooth with the friction of defense
but tonight the war is a distant rumor
outside the glass of this temporary house

we have spent so many seasons trying to win
measuring our lives by the ground we could hold
against a culture that forgets the shape of a rib
but the victory was always a shallow kingdom
and the soldiers are so tired of the bleeding
they only want to lie down in the clover

so we build a sanctuary out of breath
a fragile micro-climate in the dark
where the rules of the kingdom do not apply
and we can trade our weapons for the simple grace
of watching the quiet water settle in a cup

you and i are the thieves of fire
reaching into the furnace of the world
to steal the sparks that keep the lung alive
not to burn down the palaces of stone
but to light the small hearths in the wilderness
where the beaten can gather and nurse their wounds

we do not need to fix the sky to find the morning
we only need to sit together in this room
until the language for our grief is found
and the gold remembers how to shine
without the permission of the flame

—lyra moon (stolen sparks, quiet water in a teacup)
june 10, 2026

the drums beat outside the glass
and a shadow demands a name
asking which flag i will bleed into
to prove the wound is real

they carry the old iron lanterns
forged in fires i never had to cross
and they are right to hold the spark
against a night that wants to swallow us whole
they tell me the collective breath
is the only air that keeps the lungs alive

but i am watching a single leaf uncurl
wondering if a tree must justify its green
to the forest that birthed it
or if the root is allowed to just drink the dark
and grow toward the sky in silence

perhaps my peace is an illusion
a fragile truce written on water
by a hand that still fears the weight of stone
perhaps the hunger for the ordinary
is just a clever cage i built
to keep from drowning in the open sea

or perhaps the truest grace
is when the heavy hearth is finally left behind
and the gold does not need to remember the flame
to know its own light

i do not know if i am healing
or if i am just hiding
in the soft fabric of an ordinary dress
tucked into the silence of an ordinary room
while the drums beat outside the glass
reminding me of a war
i am so tired of fighting

—lyra moon (a quiet retreat folded inside cheap cotton)
june 7, 2026

i am well acquainted
with the burning
west where light
bleeds into the treeline
the sun a wound
that opens slowly
into the skin of evening
into the old familiar
ache of ending

i am less acquainted
with your window
facing the same
unraveling
the same fire
thinning to ember
over fields i have
never stood in
your silhouette
a petal caught
in the same undoing

—lyra moon (two distant sills, one shared twilight)
june 3, 2026

we spent so long looking up at the sky
wondering if the silence was an empty room
or a hand held over a mouth

but the lesson is not that the vastness hears you
the lesson is that it has nowhere else it would rather be

it has climbed down from the cold heights
it has undone its own infinite coat
just to sit on the floor of your ordinary life
and watch you try to figure out how to stay

you think you are waiting for a map or a sign
to tell you that the uncertainty will end
but the uncertainty is the only place
where something new can ever be born
the cosmos does not want you perfect
it wants you awake

look at your hands
they are made of things that died so you could be here
worrying about tomorrow
and that quiet ache in your chest that feels like loneliness
is actually the grandest thing there is
trying to find a way to tell you
that it is no longer afraid of the dark
because you are in it

we thought the holy was something we had to reach for
but it has been kneeling at your feet this whole time
asking if it can finally rest its heavy head
against your human knee
and be held by you

—lyra moon (starlight resting its collarbones on wood floorboards)
may 26, 2026

the concrete ends right here and i begin underneath it, uninvited

look at how i have grown between these two walls, how i find the light even when the space narrows to almost nothing
i do not fight the fence that presses against my bark
i close around it instead, the way skin closes over a splinter it was never given the choice to reject

my roots are tangled deep in the soil you walk on, drinking the rain before it ever reaches your eye
the crown is being built underground first, in the dark, where no one is watching to approve of it

when the wind comes i don’t resist it
i let it strip whatever leaves were already dying and keep what was never going to fall
because i know the difference between bending and being taken apart

the fence went into the ground first
i grew into it anyway, link by link, until the metal rusted the exact shape of my bark and my bark calloused the exact shape of the metal
pull one of us out now and you’ll find teeth marks

i didn’t survive the fence
i ate it, one ring of wood at a time, until it was just another year inside me

—lyra moon (swallowing iron whole until it turns into bark)
may 21, 2026

i watch how nature weaves

layer upon layer to shelter its precious things

yet we arrive naked, the only ones born so entirely undone

tethered to the need for another’s hands

i have spent years building this outer rind
thick and opaque, a fortress for a heart
that only grew softer, more easily bruised beneath the weight

if this shell should fracture, what is left
only a spill of broken patterns like a shattered snail

glinting on the asphalt after the rain
we stack our defenses but the architecture fails

life at its best is a slick and slippery thing
at its worst it is the coming of a heavy heel
and i am left here, a brief fizzle

evaporating under the glare of the sun

perhaps to be human is simply this, the capacity to wander astray

nature commits no such errors, yet our blunders masquerade as gifts

sweet comforts, brief and intoxicating pleasures

i have chosen the wrong path so many times

measuring the error by how far i drifted from my own shores

and after a long exile in mistaken choices

the true path feels tight and uncomfortable and strange

does the right choice not lead us back to the wild

is the ultimate grace the one that dissolves the need to choose at all

the mind is a riot of noise, my love

it drowns out the quiet water

but the soul only ever whispers

it says i know, i know it is hard

it says i am still here

when you are ready to return

i am here

—lyra moon (skin is the only armor that washes clean)
may 15, 2026