September 1, 2026

raise your hand if you’re a grand schemer
who grew up with parents who supported
and encouraged your ideas, and had plans
of their own that you saw never come to
pass because of some combination of time
and effort and sickness and death and now
even though you still have such lofty goals
you know deep inside you that you’ll never
ever ever achieve them because your whole
life is predicated on the fact that plans
never
actually go through and get done to the
endings as wanted and though you still
try to start things you are aware that the
learned patterns and subconscious trauma
makes it almost impossible for you to
see anything through at all ever in your life

or is that just me?

August 11, 2026

if still alive
my mom would be celebrating
her 40-year wedding anniversary
with my dad today

i knew there was a reason
i was drawn to wearing her
bright sunflower clothes this morning

July 22, 2025

j’ai espère que
je pouvais penser
en français

i’m fairly certain that is incorrect
damn close to gibberish
but the sentiment still stands

i wish i wish i wish
i could think
in french

maybe i could understand and speak it better
then

[was french the language my Mom studied in school?]
[could we have practiced together
if life didn’t suck so hard
in 2001?]

October 24, 2022

i wonder
if my mother
would have been great
at getting my pronouns
right

would she have stood up for me
at family gatherings
corrected people
when i wasn’t near
would she have been
the ally
i needed
to come out
with a bang
instead of this subtle
exhausting
whispered
coming out
over
and over
and over
again
every time
a ‘she’ is uttered
or a ‘ladies’ is announced
or any of those microaggressions
my gender dysphoria
insists
are actual aggression

i don’t know
i wish i knew
but i really don’t

she was an ally of all queer folks she knew
(I know 100% she’d have been to my wedding
would have celebrated like the world was ending
when she knew mine was just beginning
because that’s just the way she was)
but gender is somehow harder
and the in-between confuses even the best
of allies
and i don’t want to put her up on a pedestal
nor do i want to underestimate her devotion
to a me she never got to see

i only knew her for eleven and three quarters years
and i have memories of less
she is both the person i was closest to
and the biggest mystery of my life

and i just wish
i could guess
what it would be like
to have her
stand up
for me