"Reels and Reverence"
In flickering frames of black and white,
Where shadows dance with golden light,
I find the grace of stories old,
A sacred truth their silence told.
The silver screen, a chapel dim,
With whispered prayers in every hymn—
A glance, a pause, a world begun,
A sermon spoken without one.
Old books in leather, cracked and worn,
Their spines like saints, their pages torn—
Yet in their lines, a pulsing fire,
A quiet faith, a deep desire.
A hero's fall, a lover's vow,
A child who dares, a broken plow—
Each tale, a thread in heaven's weave,
Each sorrow taught me how to believe.
And faith, not loud but softly sewn,
Grows in the hush of things long known.
In Bogart’s stare, in Dickens’ prose,
In melodies where mercy flows.
So let the past play on, unwind,
In sepia tones that soothe the mind—
For there, beneath the dust and lace,
I meet my Maker, face to grace.
"In a Didion Light"
Some days the mind is a quiet tremor,
a glass held just before the fall.
Not shattered—just aware
of how breakable things are.
Joan knew.
She wrote in margins,
in grief-shaped prose and half-said prayers,
her sentences walking the edge
like a woman in heels on a fault line.
Faith, too, is like that—
not the thunder, but the pause.
Not the choir, but the candle
burning low in a room
where no one’s sure what comes next.
Mental health is a fragile grace.
It’s the discipline of standing still,
of folding your grief like laundry,
of letting God be silence
when words refuse to come.
And in those Didion days—
the ones where nothing makes sense
but the ritual of writing it down—
faith becomes a kind of noticing:
the light on the wall,
the taste of coffee,
the fact that you’re still here.
Still here.
Still writing.
Still naming what hurts
in a world that doesn’t always listen.
That, too,
is belief.
"The Gift of the Dark Psalm"
They call it the saddest song,
This Psalm without a sunrise—
No silver thread, no hopeful turn,
Just night piled upon night.
A cry from the depths,
Where no light dares linger,
Where prayers feel like echoes
Brushed away by God’s own fingers.
And yet—it is written.
Kept. Canonized. Holy.
Bound within the pages of praise
As if darkness, too, is worthy.
What kind of God says,
"Bring me your silence, your rage,
Your broken throat, your shattered faith—
Let it bleed on the page"?
This is not despair abandoned.
This is despair seen.
Named. Allowed.
Given space to be.
For what if feeling deeply
Is not failure, but formation?
What if our weeping
Is a form of sacred consecration?
These psalms, these laments,
Are not shameful to recite.
They are gifts—raw, wild gifts—
Meant to validate the night.
God does not flinch from sorrow.
He authored this ache.
He engraved it in Scripture
For our own hearts’ sake.
So when joy feels foreign
And you choke on the light,
Know the Psalms hold a seat for you
In the temple of the night.
"Giant Shadows"
It rode in on a Texas wind,
All swagger, oil, and pride—
A story set in cattle dust
But rumbling deep inside.
Rock Hudson’s silent strength,
Elizabeth’s iron grace,
James Dean with rebel posture,
Storm beneath his face.
But this was more than screen and stage,
Than drama carved in light—
It cracked the myth of manifest dreams
And exposed what isn’t right.
Because in the shadow of oil wells,
Brown hands served and bowed.
And in the halls of rancher wealth,
The silence spoke too loud.
It asked us—
Who gets to inherit the land?
Who gets to speak at the table?
Who gets to love, to rise, to dream,
And who must wait, if able?
Giant told a tale of empire,
Of fortunes soaked in sand,
But dared to say, with quiet force:
This soil is not just your land.
It showed a man grow old and change,
To sit beside the ones he’d scorned,
To rock a brown-skinned baby,
As the future was being born.
A movie—yes. A mirror, more.
To a country built on shift and strife.
A warning wrapped in western dust:
You cannot fence in life.
And so it lingers, timeless still,
Its message broad and bold—
That giants aren’t just men or myths,
But the systems we uphold.
Platonic Heartbreak
I’ve been doing a lot of things in the name of preserving the fleeting slivers of a once flaming will to live. Although the word justification is nuanced because I shouldn’t have to justify a lot of the things that must be done to give precedence to mental health, I still find myself in contact with this once unconscious action and it's gotten me thinking that things in relation to this act deserve a deeper look. Mental health, that stupid stigmatized phrase, my mom still feels second-hand shame when it's pushed past my lips; I convince myself I should feel comfortable naming my struggles. YOU feel comfortable, and good, for once bad reasons. Reaching for you when I couldn’t get you justified my internalized identity as one who would express sentimental emotion and support without adequate return. Who would want this for themselves? One whose experience with this one-sided relationship is homestyle, agreeable, satisfying. A taste of home without the atrocious exterior. I’ve been doing things that feel good. Justifying my self-sabotage. Blinding myself, blurring the view of what could be for me instead of the safe pervasive hurt I love so much. The only thing that hurts is how much I know you think my sentiments are embarrassing. I can’t rid myself of them until I wrap my head around that my feelings are valid - not defining. I deserve better but I don’t believe that you're not the one to prove to me what love and true friendship are. What makes me feel alive is illusory and yet I justify it with my life. The attachment still brings a sense of joy, a solidification of my loyalty that you now know you get to abuse all over again. But at least I get a new writing piece and another shard of my heart, blood to sign and stamp it. You picked a great choice. I wish it was up to me but I feel trapped and manipulated with no tangibility to back up these beliefs. One day out of nowhere I'll pack up knowing you feel a fraction of what I feel every day and I'll try my best to take pride in that, stitching it into my withering web of identity while you feel what would be juxtaposed as fake remorse. Maybe my sense of disgust with me stems from you, but how can I blame you when it's really our differences and my frivolity with who I am. You make my stomach hurt.
New York
When I last went, I was only 13 years old and only my classmates' thoughts on me occupied my mind and aggressively drowned out what I should have, would have felt about New York. But it taught me that to properly experience life through my lens, I must be alone, for I change around others and the majority of my perspective is altered. Like a shattered kaleidoscope but a few pieces glued back together just so I don't fully forget myself around others. An attempt to satisfy my loneliness, with shards of my lonely self, I am naive enough to think those will cancel out. But I’ll let myself believe for a while longer. Anyways I miss New York. Everyday and all the time, at first without even knowing I did. It is the best and most beautiful place for me. If I had a better, less confining word for introvert, I would have put that there instead of “me”. It is a beautiful place for the misplaced. It is a beautiful place for tragic people. For people so comfortable with heartbreak that only their own solitude can heal each ruined day. It is a beautiful place for people to feel misunderstood and totally understood at the same time. It is a beautiful place for people whose life has and will always look different than others. For people who are always growing, and can find new rose buds in comforting experiences every time. It is a beautiful place for young girls who remember feeling stupid in kindergarten and doing too much to change that feeling. A beautiful place for people who get attached to everyone they meet, so they can make sure they get love in return. The girls who figured out that it took obsession, to earn love. New York is a beautiful place for the girls who had to learn boundaries with their emotionally immature mothers and intense fathers. A beautiful place for girls who ran after dinner so they began to skip it, until they pulled themselves together and learned healthy balanced eating all by themselves, but the insecurity creeps in once and a while. A beautiful place for those who love rain and lying in the street, who choose $7 coffee and corner bookstores instead of drugs. New York is a beautiful place for the people who find blips of a reason to live in romanticizing everything, although it hurts them often. For girls who developed unhealthy coping mechanisms until they knew better but who still have to squeeze their left arm up against the middle storage compartment in the car, hiding stories of silenced tears and cries for help. New York is a beautiful place for those who need to transform their own environment into a place of healing and love. For girls who are disgusted by the simplicity of anaphora but make the most of it because it’s a stupid school requirement, who are the best writers in their class but still have a poor grade in English. For the girls who hate cliche selfcare tactics, but will always make it their own, in some way. The girls who break down in front of their teacher when asked about their book report which helplessly morphed into a cry for help. New York is for the people who miss themselves but still search everyday. New York is for the girls who are shocked when they compare their age versus their journaled thoughts. New York is for everyone and no one. New York is for me because I can make it so, something designed for me, something made to understand me as much as I try to understand it. New York is for those who hang onto the withering belief that their excessive love deserves to be reciprocated. For the girls who have no choice but to try it out there, just to see if it’ll change their lives, as they've begun to feel numb to every aspect. New York is a beautiful place for the beautiful people who think it would be almost psychedelic to feel so alone in such a city. New York is deeply powerful and stimulatingly soft. For girls who try to remind themselves that despite their descent, they are still lovely young women who have so much to offer, so much potential, even though deep down these reminders will never drown out their own contradictions.