Stained Glass Mornings
I have lingered in Your house,
hands folded until the knuckles grew stiff,
a heart unsteady beneath the high rafters.
I watched the candlelight flicker
on faces that preach Your infinite love,
but saw how they hesitate, how their eyes downcast
the moment they trace the silhouette of me.
I have sung the hymns until my throat was dry,
knelt in the wooden pews,
and wondered if a prayer, once whispered,
can lose its way before it reaches the ceiling.
But I feel You most in her laughter.
The way our fingers lace together—not in guilt,
but like an answered prayer.
The warmth of her voice calling my name into the dark,
the steady, undeniable rhythm of her heartbeat
pressing against my own.
I know the hands that crafted me are the very same hands
that breathed life into my chest, just as full,
just as worthy of the morning light.
If love is Your greatest command,
it cannot be a thing meant to be whispered in the shadows.
I remember being a child,
dipped deep beneath the heavy water,
emerging shivering into Your arms.
I grew up catching my breath at stained glass mornings,
reverent for the hush that holds the room before the Amen.
The Eucharist—the body, the blood—
I welcome its soft weight on my tongue,
a sacred promise I refuse to let them break.
You are love without limits,
mercy without measure.
So I am done trying to fit the pattern of their world,
done bending to shapes meant to keep me small.
True transformation lives in this unlearning—
the renewing of a mind that finally remembers its own worth.
Only here, outside their narrow walls,
can I look at what You made and call it good.
Unconformed. Authentic.
Standing whole in the wide morning light,
where You hold me close.
Wild Honey and the Undercurrent
They told me how the summer was supposed to taste—
tart and clean, like cold water from a garden hose,
something predictable you swallow without thinking.
They talked about boys the way people talk about the weather:
an expected direction, a regular Sunday afternoon,
a map everyone agreed on.
I tried to look where they looked,
but no one warned me about the shift in the tide.
You were standing by the screen door catching the evening light,
uncoiling the thick, dark weight of your hair.
The black curls looping down in a single, unbroken ribbon
with the light catching the slope of your shoulder,
and the small curve of your waist.
My breath caught in a way it never had for a man.
That wasn't a lesson I was ever taught.
It was a sudden, heavy pulling in my chest—
a terrifying, beautiful hunger to reach out and touch your skin.
I spent years keeping my hands buried in my pockets,
scared that this secret, this desperate heat, would show like a bruise.
I watched the other girls move easily into the daylight,
I watched the other girls move easily into the daylight,
falling into romance with boys like they were slipping into old coats.
But to me, their world felt entirely flat.
You were the electricity that changed the texture of the air.
And my pulse jumps
the exact second your fingers brush against mine.
I look at your mouth and I don’t see a confusing riddle anymore—
I see a wild thicket blooming in the middle of their manicured lawn,
a heavy, quiet shade where I finally want to belong.
Take the risk. Take the afternoon.
Let the neighbors look through the blinds if they want to.
I want to pull you into the open,
unafraid of the current,
learning for the very first time
how deep my own desire can go.
The Choreography
i became a fluent speaker in the language of fine
a word that is less an answer and more a tactical retreat
a shield forged from the exhaustion of explaining a self
they were never prepared to look at.
how are you they ask across the kitchen counters and office desks
and my throat performs the routine choreography
lifting the syllables up like a heavy curtain
to hide the stage where everything is currently on fire.
if i told you there truth, the room would lose its balance.
if i told you the truth, you would look at my hands
and wonder whose blood was on them,
never realizing it was entirely my own,
spilled from the quiet lacerations of trying to cut myself down
into a shape that could fit neatly inside your vocabulary.
so i say fine.
i say good, thank you.
i say whatever is necessary to keep the air still,
sacrificing my own oxygen to keep your atmosphere
undisturbed.
Exposure at Thirty-Two Millimeters
Let the archives record the grand histories.
I am only interested in the small, domestic friction of Tuesday:
the kettle screaming on the stove,
the stray dark hairs tangled in the plastic teeth of your comb,
and the way you navigate the tight hallway of this apartment
like a ship that has finally found its deep water.
The world outside is busy drawing its neat, parallel lines,
people walking in predictable currents down the sidewalk.
But here, the air is thick with a different syntax.
You are wearing my oversized flannel, the sleeves rolled twice,
laughing at something stupid I said before the tea was even made.
I watch you through the glass of an old lens,
adjusting the focus until the grain of your skin comes clear.
They never taught us to look at women like this—
not as a question to be answered,
not as a shadow to be tucked away in a locked drawer,
but as a sudden, luminous territory.
Let the neighbors guess at the two names on the mailbox.
Let them wonder why the kitchen light stays on so late,
or what kind of fire we are tending in the middle of an ordinary week.
We are building an empire out of mismatched mugs
and a shared silence that doesn’t ask anyone for permission.
I am done squinting into the flat daylight of their expectations.
I want the full exposure.
The raw, unedited truth of your palm against my ribs,
the quiet certainty of a room that belongs entirely to us,
and a love that doesn’t need a map
to know exactly where it lands.