Annee
and Jini
and Lynnette
and Jane
each of you raised me
in your own way
and i still ache for you
every
single
day
turning trauma into art
August 20, 2025
as fall approaches
but isn’t quite here
not yet
not yet
the memories of late summers past
invades my mind
sans consent
[do flashbacks ever ask?]
and no matter how stable
and lovely
and mine
my life is today
i keep seeing
loss
upon loss
upon lost trust
upon that feeling of any control in life
fleeting though it may have been
stolen in an instant
and this current administration
certainly doesn’t help this
weird ptsd i’ve found myself in
everything seems to be
culminating in something
and i continue to avoid all emotions and memories
until absolutely
necessary
August 11, 2025
i heard a stat the other day
that straight depression
[and also perhaps straight anxiety
don’t know specifically, since the show
was only about depression management]
is so much easier to treat
than the intertangled combo of the two
and coming from someone who has been officially diagnosed
with major depressive disorder
and generalized anxiety disorder
[at the same time]
and feel like i’ve never known a brain
without the two holding metaphorical hands,
this sounds quite accurate
what gives me distress?
is it the depression?
is it the anxiety?
i honestly have a hard enough time differentiating the two
since they seem to egg each other on
like the “bad kids” at the back of the classroom,
and simply identifying one
or the other
is trouble enough
how would i even begin to just take on
one
or the other?
[and, honestly, i also have to ask
how
in the world
someone even could have one
without the other?]
watch
in fifty or so years
they’ll change the diagnoses,
and my particular issues
will be called something different
[and maybe, by then, they’ll have come up with
a great treatment regiment…
but for now, i just keep trying to keep them both at bay
as best i can
with the resources available
to me/
to us]
June 20, 2025
uncertainty
in what to write
in what to do
at any given moment
day
or night
the uncertainty
is what freezes me
not potential good
or bad outcomes
but all the options
showing themselves to me
beat
by beat
by beat
until
the overwhelm becomes too much
that inaction is the safest path to take
[but it actually
never really
is]
June 12, 2025
how can there be
so much horror in the world
alongside such beauty?
how can death happen one day
and the next, the miracle of a whole new life?
how can those celebrating a graduation/
a union/
pure friendship
be next door to
domestic violent terror
in one’s own home?
i haven’t figured out yet
how to be a happy person
while also knowing
so much that happens behind
tightly closed doors
in front of
tightly shut eyes
because, from my position here,
it feels counterintuitive —
i’m trapped in feeling like
one thing cannot be acknowledged
if the other isn’t also
but perhaps that’s my own black and white
fault
thinking
because there’s also
often
mundane day happening
alongside mundane day
and it’s the grey that
somehow
sometimes
keeps us going
May 5, 2025
sometimes the yearning gets to be too much
and the decision is either to
delve deep
and inevitably find
that even as i try
to live in the memories of the moments gone by
i can’t even remember them
accurately
fully
or, sometimes,
at all
or
just pretend like i’m putting off that analysis
for another day
and put it of
and put it off
and wait
and wait
and wait for the day when
i will be able to remember accurately and fully
because of magic
or time travel
or something else entirely
[even though i know
full well
the first stanza of this poem
will never fully be fixed
so i prefer to live in this one
where the possibility
still
exists]
May 3, 2025
i don’t know how to stop my kip
from staring at their phone
reading the terrible news
and feeling worse
and worse
and worse
as the hours go by
because
if left to my own devices
i would stare at my phone
and watch videos of
on the ground tragedies
and feel worse
and worse
and worse
as the hours go by
and neither of us feeling worse
will change the things happening
halfway across the world
or right in our own backyard
we need to fill our cups
and have the hope
and energy
to put forth change
that will help
others
and ourselves
but
how
how
how
when everything feels so important
and hopeless
in the palms of our
hands?
March 26, 2025
i don’t know what i’m waiting for
but i’m waiting
i’m waiting
January 5, 2025
“meanwhile
back on the farm…”
why do singular lessons stand out to me
when whole years disappear
in my sieve of a memory?
i can barely remember the good times
and only moments of the bad
and probably just what i made monologues of memories
is what still comes back to me
even after i’ve long since let go of that story in my repertoire
[what would it be like to have the memory
i was born with, instead of the memory
i was traumatized to have?]
January 4, 2025
i’m ecstatic
i’m scared
i’m electrified
i’m anxious
i’m invigorated
i’m apprehensive
i’m defensive
i’m meditative
i’m happy?
[maybe?]
i’m existential
i’m whatever
i’m apoplectic
i’m in shock
i’m winding down
i’m revving up
i’m lost
i’m found
i’m starting now
i’ve gone through so much
i want
i want
i need
i yearn
i spin yarn after yarn after yarn
but i never seem to learn
that it’s all part of the human condition —
there isn’t one affliction or emotion
better or worse than the others
when you look at one whole life lived
[and you’re not even near the end
as far as makes sense — why are you always
wrapping up your life in your head
to make the ending
an end
rather than a beginning
of a new era]
[you do you,
but also,
there’s more left of you
than you seem to act like
you
have
left]
kipventures 