No stumbling

The body that carries
termination letters
and exclusion
and all types of grief
in a cold country
moving now like
a debt forgiven without warning

The deer ahead
tawny and untroubled
white ass showing the way
threading between trunks
a rumor in a forest
that already knows me

It stopped and turned
with the patience of stone
still becoming
and the confidence
I would not be a hunting human

What are you really looking for?

The question left its sternum
finding a throat to exit through
I had no answer except
hyperventilating at the thought
that a deer is unafraid of me!
Now we only hear the sound
of my own breathing
which is also the sound
of a scared animal
who ran in their pajamas

Then its head lifted
and there it was
above the canopy
a moon so blue and swollen
airless
holding its breath anyway
against the smell of Earth

I started to climb
Not gracefully
With my knees
and my stubbornness
and the lived-in trust
of a body that has outlasted
everything it said it wouldn’t

No stumbling

Branch by branch
the forest collapsing below me
its darkness becoming
a thing I had exhaled
not a thing I was lost in

And I LEAPT

The moon had velvet texture
I hadn’t expected clean air
Cold and weirdly yielding
like a bruise you find on the hip
and cannot remember earning

I stood on the face of that blue giant
and looked back down
at the treeline
at the small dark square of the house
at the life-sized version of myself
still standing at the yard’s edge
still holding the question

What are you really looking for?

Above the moon
more sky
than I had ever
budgeted for

So I kept climbing

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

Buy my e-book at Barnes&Noble!

Buy my book at Amazon (print & Kindle)!

This is the place I wanted most
to be today. Here’s the coffee thermos.
The wind lifts my hair like a hand.
Is it your hand? No. Don’t touch!

The light pools on this slope,
making a kind promise of warmth.
The city’s still a beast,
howling in its Sunday sleep.

But here, the birds mean it,
ripping the air with song.
You’d know their names.
I only ever felt them.
Which is the one with the orange chest?
Is that a sex or a fight chirp?

Remember the river,
cold, fast, laughing?
We almost drowned.
It would have been your fault,
you gone down like a rock.
Every single time.

That’s how I am now.
Not drowning, but falling,
a silent current toward this,
this quiet, this green lawn,
a cushion just being with you.

I brought the book,
the one we argued over.
You said I missed the ending.
That’s all I read some days.

The wind is here,
earth, rain not yet fallen,
something clean. What is
the opposite of petrichor?
A new pillowcase. Dust on the
windowsill. Tulips still came out.

The grass is too long.
They should cut it.
Instead I sit,
watch the light,
and talk to you, and the birds.

Spring is cruel, isn’t it?
All this green,
all this life
bursting forth
right here
on your stone.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Buy my e-book at Barnes&Noble!

Buy my book at Amazon (print & Kindle)!

You were always free.
I stood at the threshold
of your world, looked into the dim room
where desire keeps its lamps unlit
and walked away hungry.
Your selfies, unwanted invoices.
Your lies are stitched with
white thread on black fabric.
I needed none of your proof.

You called it devotion.
I call it a debt you invented,
then demanded I pay in awe.
You don’t get a gift for your patience
that no one asked for but you
committed to anyway.
You don’t cancel a rejection with waiting,
then blame the other
for not being there for you.

Some doors
you know by their hinges
they spin all ways and always
open toward bullies.

I have pressed my mouth to people
whose names are ash now,
whose hands I’d know blind in any crowd.
You are not even ash.
You are the gap where smoke
started forming. Fire’s out.

Months.
That’s all the time it takes
for the body to forget
what it never touched,
the mind to erase
a name it never spoke aloud.

You? You’re already that:

A threshold I paused at.
A room I didn’t enter.
The easiest no
my mouth ever said.

A slow snow falls at zero degrees,
dusting the gravel of the parking lot,
promising rest. You believe it.
You plan dark satin hours,
Saturday’s long read,
Sunday’s animal sleep.

But the weekend is a hawk.
It stoops. Talons first.

Friday evening vanishes in one iron grip:
a single glass of wine, the Substack scroll,
cats yowling across the couch for play that
never comes.

Saturday is already in its jaws:
shoveling wet cement snow,
groceries marching in brown paper squads,
noon gutted and cooling on the floor.

You meant to read that book. You meant
to let the hours stretch like meadow grass.
Instead, the hours are rats
muscling through the minutes,
chewing the studs until the whole day
shudders like a vodka aftertaste.

By Sunday afternoon the bones are picked clean.
Your body yawns at the sink, disgusted.
A sneeze cracks like the first snow closing the pass.
Dish soap chills your knuckles.

The weekend is smoke threading a keyhole,
a ghost already gone,
a bullet lodged in the dirt
behind the target you never faced.

High on the telephone wire a crow laughs,
like it’s seen this show a thousand times.
Tomorrow’s Monday.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Buy my e-book at Barnes&Noble!

Buy my book at Amazon (print & Kindle)!

The dark is a stain, spreading, stubborn.
My grandmother, holding the gas lamp,
threw a shadow behind her in the shape
of a man, a fist, a bottle’s blunt contour.

Gold, they say, is pure stuff.
It gleams on the tech bro’s cuff,
on the dictator’s ring,
often given to women
to subdue them. A signpost.

But inside, the ore remembers
the black lung of the mine,
the child’s finger, broken,
prying it from the rock.

You can see the oil from the sky,
a dark eye weeping on the ocean,
a thick, iridescent film
on the gull’s wing,
a death-shroud of petroleum.

And the coal,
the fossilized scream
of a forest, crushed,
turned to muscle for the machine,
a dark, compressed fury.

Buy my book!

They polish it.
They call it progress.
They lay it out through pipes
this black, internal pus
of the planet, and they sell it
for gold and wage war for it:
their child for my car,
their house for my air conditioning.

We need more oil.
And they have enough people.
They even kill them themselves!

The rape is not just to the body,
it’s the spirit, torn, a flag
ripped from its pole in a gale.
Always the ghost in the sheets.
Damp weight of another’s will.
A burial while still breathing.

A silence afterward, a rage-block
in the throat, keeping you stunned.
The world stops completely
while you are too shocked
to name what was taken.
Who will even believe you.
You’re trying to remember
what you wore. Are you a whore?

It’s all extraction, all for one’s benefit.
The sun keeps rising,
a blind, indifferent eye.
The light hits the surface,
the polished veneer
of the kitchen backsplash,
but the deep current
still runs black,
a river of old grief,
old greed,
under everything
you see on your TV.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Buy my book!

Bullshit. Read the fossils.

Buy my book!

They built a house around my knees
low ceilings of expectation,
I plastered the walls with what-ifs.
The windows were narrow,
framed only the sky they approved.

They wanted me soft:
a peach, a pillow, a vessel
for their bloodline and their tired men.
I came out a fist in their mouths.

My mother’s mother’s mother
stitched instructions into my placenta
generations of good girls,
tight braids, mouths sewn shut.
I chewed through the cord like a snake
shedding its own blueprint.

Now my hands map territories
no man has ever named.
Not even Zeus and his thunderbolt dick
gets to plant a flag here.

I am not a mountain for you to climb.
You will not trade me for two goats
or a handful of dowry.
I will not soften.
I will not serve.

I found the jagged edges
they tried to sand smooth
bright, sharp points
that can cut through their ancient lies.

Patriarchy? I put the bread on the table.

Do not speak of tradition.
Do not define what a woman is.

I am the earthquake that brings down your house.
And I am coming
for everything
they told me
I could not be.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

And somewhere along the way we forget the insane statistical miracle that we’re even here at all.

Of the infinite ways DNA could have twisted and folded, only one narrow band makes you human. And of all the possible human lives that could have been printed from that code, yours won the lottery.

So what do you do with it?

A million suns spat forth their dust,
A trillion currents coiled,
And still, the blind, black, brutal thrust
Of chance, unsoiled, unfoiled,

Made you, a crimson heresy.

This flesh, this bone-cage,
A miracle of mud and light,
A furious, brief, bewildering stage
Against the endless night.
Love it! Your skin, a map of storms.
Your mind, a fractured, roaring sea.
Let no shadow of lesser forms
Eclipse this fierce, alive decree.

Live, you bastard!
The wind, a whip across your face,
The earth, a drum beneath your heel.
No holy writ, no creed, no race,
But what your rawest senses feel.
Run till the lungs are fire,
Jump till the sky is torn.
Swim the dark river of desire,
Fly, before the dawn is born.

Garden, go mimic nature, plant and pour,
Hike the peaks, where eagles scream.
Climb the impossible, hour by hour.
Play the mad, forgotten dream.
Dance till the bones are dust,
Sing till the throat is raw.
Live! This brutal, precious lust,
Beyond all nature’s law.

Only this: no fist upon another’s jaw.
No whisper of your god, your truth, your flag,
Across their trembling, sacred flaw.
No chain, no cross, no gag.
That line, a razor’s edge,
A silent, burning, absolute.
Beyond it, only sacrilege.
Live. Till the last gasp. Live. Unbound.
Then, rot. And fertilize the ground.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Buy my book!

Shame on the chant, “America First!”
while the Church is dragged to heel.

Shame on cardinals seated on Pentagon thrones,
boasting of missiles, “Do whatever we want,”
while an American Pope is told to fall in line.

Shame on each “Christian” who cheered that bully’s roar
as strength, when it was just Caesar, stark naked,
demanding worship.

Avignon in your back pocket.
Reichskonkordat on your lips.

This is Satan’s oldest trick, dressed in red, white, and blue.

Shame on you.

Where did you lose the verses?
The proud scattered. The mighty cast down.

No one serves two masters
especially one who tweets in all caps and rapes women.
especially one who never knew love for others
or empathy, humility or grace.

Shame on you.

True Christians do not threaten Popes with medieval chains.

The First Amendment was written by men who fled
kings dictating pulpits.

Will you next come for the Baptist down the street,
the Protestant who still remembers
“Blessed are the peacemakers”?

Renounce this altar built to political power.
Your soul for a seat at the table.
Your witness for winning.

The Church does not belong to Trump.
Trump is a convicted criminal.

Shame, shame, shame.

Belief needs no Pentagon briefing,
fears no emperor’s sword.

You who sold your birthright for cable-news stew
look in the mirror.

The Jesus you claim would be ashamed.

Shame on you.
YOU DID THIS.
Shame.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Buy my book!

My hands remember the curve of her throat.
The way a bird’s wing folds.
More like a settling in than a break.
A final, perfect quiet.

She was a river, my Danube. A dark current.
Always running somewhere else.
Even when she laughed for me, a sound like glass chimes,
I heard the undertow. The pull.
She cooked for me, yes. Spiced vegan loaf.
Her fingers, quick and bright,
chopping parsley, fast as light,
and I saw the shadow of another hand
reaching for the knife.

They say love is a kind of drowning.
But I was the shore.
The granite. The unmoving.
She crashed against my shore for years,
never leaving the fucking water,
as I sat there like a rock, afraid to swim,
her hair a wild flag, salt on her lips,
and I knew then. The ocean was not enough.
She wanted a wider blue,
a deeper current
and another man’s breath on her neck.

Foolish.
To think I couldn’t see the fracture.
The hairline crack in the porcelain of her smile.
It wasn’t a flaw; it was a door.
Swinging open. For him.
Always him. The phantom limb.
The whisper in the static.
The way her eyes, sometimes,
would glaze over. Like a film.
A projection of some other room.

We bathed together. Steam rising.
Her skin, a warm peach.
And I’d trace the map of her spine.
Each vertebra a promise.
A knot tied tight.
But even then, the water,
it carried her away. A little.
Each drop a betrayal.
Each ripple, a secret.
Wet, but not mine.

They don’t understand.
The alchemy of possession.
The way a thing, once mine,
becomes the air I breathe.
The marrow in my bone.
How can a bone leave its body?
How can air simply stop?
She is my breath. My blood.
My making and remaking into man.

And now, this quiet. This perfect stillness.
Her river, finally contained.
No more currents. No more undertow.
No more wide blue.
Just the slow, steady hum of forever.
The moon, still rolling.
And her, here on the armchair,
with her beloved big book.
Finally, forever, with me.
The way a shadow clings to a wall.
The way a thought clings to the mind.
A perfect, beautiful,
unbreakable woman I’ll own. Just mine.

Buy my book!

In 2024, an estimated 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member: one every 10 minutes, or 137 every single day. Sixty percent of all intentional killings of women and girls occur at the hands of someone they knew and often loved.

If you recognize any part of this voice in yourself or someone close to you, reach out for help. There are resources. There is life after the relationship ends, without needing to end a life.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

He came, he saw, a storm of gold
From Mar-a-Lago, he ran it all.
He came, he said, for Republicans,
For the loyal, the true, the ones who stayed,
Except maybe a couple.
He came, he said, and the room pulsed,
A single, vast, breathing beast,
No couple here, no couple there,
He didn’t care. He said

“Who stole my sharpie?”

He said, we win.
We win the presidency, a successful presidency.
He said, our border, a steel jaw,
Secure.
He said, our spirit, a hawk’s shriek,
Restored.
He said, inflation, a snake crushed,
Plummeting.
He said, incomes, a river in flood,
Rising fast.
He said, the economy, a lion,
Roaring, roaring like never before.
He said, zero illegal aliens,
None, a void, a clean slate.
He said the wall, we build it,
Mexico will pay for it.
He said, gasoline, a wound,
A disaster.

He said China, China, China,
He said, Nobel Peace Prize,
He said, tariffs, a foreign hand,
Paying, paying for the past,
Replacing the tax, the modern-day bleed.
He said, seven wars, eight wars, nine wars,
Ended, all. He said

“Where’s my Diet Coke?”

He said, no windmill.
No windmill built on my watch!
He said, they are losers.
They are killing us.
They are killing the beauty, the green skin of our scenery.
They are driving whales loco,
A madness in the deep,
Killing birds, a feather-fall, a silent death.
He said, they will never have a nuclear weapon.
He said, our objective, a spear-thrust of the brave!
To defend, to eliminate threats,
The Iranian regime, a vicious group,
Hard, terrible people.
He said, nations, fat with oil,
From the Strait of Hormuz,
They should build courage, a slow, heavy thing,
And get involved. He said

“Why can’t we take the oil?”

Have you read my book?

They have so much oil.
He said, Venezuela.
We have to do one thing.
Bring it back.
He said, it’s a dead country,
A corpse.
He said, we would have been it,
If I had lost.
He said, we will win.
Win, win, win, win.
He said, our country, a titan,
Safer, stronger, richer.
He said, I love those Republicans.
He said, I meant it.
He said, I said.
He said.

“Where are my meds?”

Leave a comment

Someone change the channel. I might make this a song tomorrow when I lose the nausea.

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

I once asked my mother
if I should forgive my cheating boyfriend,
and she said she would never give me an answer
so I cannot hold my failures against her.

She was right.

Nobody cares.
No. Body. Cares.
what you do,
your tiny outcomes
a pebble dropped in a fjord,
ripples swallowed by the ice.

They want you to bloom,
a perfect pink-petalled thing
for their garden.
But when the frost comes,
when the stem snaps,
they’ll be inside,
sipping tea,
wondering why you didn’t just
try harder.

They’ll coo about babies,
the soft, sweet weight of them,
like a lullaby whispered
through a closed door.
But the sleepless nights,
the colic-screams carving canyons in your skull,
the endless, hungry want,
that’s your cross, darling.
Your singular,
unshared,
unpaid-for
burden.

They won’t buy the formula.
They won’t sit with the fever.
They won’t foot the bill
for the textbooks
or the therapy
when the world breaks them
like it broke you.

You betray yourself
a slow leak,
your soul draining
for a flicker of stranger-light,
a moth drunk on a dead lamp.

You chase their nods,
their fleeting, flimsy approval,
a sugar-rush high.
You twist yourself into knots
of palatable performance.
For whom?
The ghost of another’s smile?
A relative, a stranger, a colleague,
someone who will remember your name
just before Christmas Eve,
or forget it before the year is out.

Five years.
Fifteen.
When the wrong path
has welded into your bones,
when the soul-sucking job
has snuffed the spark from your eyes,
when the wrong hands
have left bruises on your spirit,
will they send you flowers?
Will they mend the broken thing
you became
trying to please them?

Why the ring?
The white dress?
The societal cage
gilded with expectation,
when your heart beats
for a different drum?

Why the performance
of anything normative?
Why the lonely room,
the quiet meals,
when real connection hums
just beyond the wall
of their judgment?

Let them speak.
Let their opinions
clatter like loose change
on cold pavement.

They are not living your life.
They are not breathing your air.
They are not dying your death.

Their words are just wind
a temporary disturbance.

And you, my dear,
are a hurricane
banging at a ship’s hull,
demanding to come out and dance.

Read my book already?

Choose your own wreckage.
Build your own wild garden.
Let them watch you burn,
or bloom,
or simply
be.

Alone or not
but gloriously,
unapologetically,
free.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

Happy Easter, but not to the streets of Gaza’s pain,
Where thousands were dead in the pouring rain.
Their blood, you see, is not good for Easter.

Pass the glazed ham.
Bake the hot cross buns.

Happy Easter to the cross that shattered the grave,
but not to Iran, where the missiles rave,
a different kind of resurrection
thousands more fallen under fire, no left crave.

Dye the colored eggs.
Hunt the chocolate ones.

Happy Easter, but not to the displaced millions,
hordes of helpless souls,
a dust cloud of wandering,
no place for kneeling, no ground to call their own.

Happy Easter to the believers,
washed in the blood.

Whose blood is worthy at this Easter tide?
Not the blood on the other side.
Not the blood that bows to the crescent moon,
not the blood spilled under rocket, under drone,
under the scorching sun.

Awww, you got a real bunny?
Pass the deviled eggs.

Have you read my book?

Happy Easter to the resurrection light.
But not to the darkness.
The endless night.
In Palestine.
In Iran.
Where the bodies pile high.
A terrible sight.
No one’s lamb.
No one’s child.

The BBQ sauce,
is it mild?

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

This poem was also processed into a song, the lyrics are not 100% matching the poem as verses are too long for a song buuuut you have a half surprise on this one: I recorded my voice for Suno.ai and it claims to have used it when producing this song. I do hate my voice and cannot guarantee to this claim :)) but try it out!

You were born with ninety-nine problems
bills that bite and dreams that die
a heart too small for the world around you
no one loves you, wonder why?

But it's the hundredth that consumes you
the one that keeps you up at night
who uses which bathroom, who dares to love whom
who gave her permission to fight?

Smile more, what's in your pants
why aren't you nicer, I'm a nice guy
you police their kisses, their names, their bodies
you call it tradition, but it's a lie.

Homophobe, you lose sleep over two men kissing,
like their joy is a personal theft from your lonely bed.
You call it “unnatural” while your hate festers.
You scream “protect the family”
but the only thing breaking is your grip
on a world that never needed your permission.
But secretly you watch lesbian porn like a kinky sin.

Transphobe, you fixate on the mirror some dare to change,
on hormones and names and bodies finally becoming home.
You patrol the stalls like a scared soldier,
terrified someone might find relief in their skin,
while you rot in the body you were handed,
never learned to question,
and no one learned to love.

Sexist, you measure every woman by how small she makes herself,
how quiet, how breeding, how pleasing to your fragile ego.
You want her barefoot, pregnant, and grateful,
you want her competition to serve you,
you want her fire dimmed
so your tiny flame looks bright.
So you neg her, and you criticize, and you
let her know of all the tiny ways she fails in your eyes.

Three masks, one face, same red hat,
fear dressed up as tradition,
insecurity wearing God’s name,
control pretending to be morality.

You police people’s kisses,
transitions, ambitions, positions,
their very right to take up space
in their own life without apology.

This fear, it is a hungry thing.
This fear, it gnaws at your gut,
a constant, dull ache.
This fear, it makes you small,
makes you shrivel,
makes you see monsters where there are only mirrors.

This fear, it is the same fear.
The same brittle cage.
The same desperate need to control
what is not yours to hold.

Are you really afraid or just
a fucking stalker?

Meanwhile everyone else
is out here, loving without shame,
becoming without permission,
rising without asking you a thing.

We turn your 100th problem into dust on the floor.
We dance on the graves of your rigid rules.
We build families you can’t define,
lives you can’t control,
bodies you can’t categorize,
and we do it without asking you a thing.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

O, Discombobulator, hum! A plastic ray-gun, bigly,
In hands that tremble not, before the lens,
A secret whispered, live, a glee-ful gush:
“Not allowed, not allowed to say, but we have… things.”
Things invisible, tremendous waves,
That turned Venezuelan rockets
To duds. Molested heads. Buttons pressed
In vain, while guards
Vomit blood, a detail
So precise it sounds like fiction.
Believe him.

The grown men, oh, the suits, the ties,
Must weep their eyes out, salt on silk,
As secrets, like cheap wine,
Are poured live, on camera.
The Discombobulator, humming out his mouth
In the rhythm of the waltz, for all to hear.

At thirty thousand feet, a silver bird
To Bedminster’s green, green golf.
Top-secret documents, meant for twelve eyes
(A covenant of silence),
Unfolded on a plastic tray.
Red-dot maps of living assets
Bleed onto leather, plush and deep.
He passes them like canapés
To golf-pals, aides
Whose clearance is a club-card,
Not a nation’s trust.
The Discombobulator, now,
Is in the air. Humming louder.
Nobody’s ever seen
Such a flight. The neurons,
Fried. A scent of steak
And champagne. A strange
new world of diplomacy.

Behind black drapes, a charity’s soft glow,
Tuxedos waltzing, whispers low.
He builds a SCIF, a makeshift velvet tent,
Photographs it for the feed.
Carrier groups, troop lines
Glow on an easel, behind the red cap.
The Discombobulator posts it all. Online.
For any foe with zoom, with internet.

In Davos, he mixes Iceland and
Greenland, like gin and tonic,
Threatens NATO friends
For a Nobel he will never receive.
“No obligation now
To think of Peace.”
Then, days later,
A soft-shell TACO, full of shit.
He changes his mind.
The Discombobulator throws a fit.
The map itself crinkles with disgust.
A genius, very stable,
A child, with crayons,
And a whole world to draw.

Surreal orders, obliteration
For Iran. Scrawled
Across briefings, classified.
He photographs them with his phone:
“Conclude our lovely ‘stay’
By blowing up their plants”,
Then the rogue thumb, hovering,
Autocomplete betraying:
Grab them by the..

So we sit in our front-row seats,
watching the world crumble
drunk, at three in the morning
while he waves his plastic gun
like a cocktail shaker,
winning so much
and nothing at all.

He tells us it’s going to be beautiful.
Isn’t it?

Buy my book!

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link to buy the deer some fodder instead.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would like to read it on Substack, DM me and I’ll grant you a few weeks of paid subscription so you can access the Curriculum stories.

I’ll unfold all your stories
to meet you in the dark
the scar on your left arm,
the first lie you told,
the taste of your tongue
when you wake,
every last seed of what you know,
what you’ve seen under the sun’s hard eye,
the moon’s indifferent gaze.

I’ll take it in,
this harvest of your mind,
even the rot, the silences.
I’ll catalog every flaw,
judged in the dark,
but kept.

I’ll eye your eyes.
When they watch me, I read the squints,
the hunger, clawing curiosity,
the more. Layers.

Like a geologist armed
with questions,
I chip at the strata of your gaze.

I long to forget my duties in your arms,
my debts to life and beings,
the long, persistent list of the world’s
demands. I want to absolve you
of expectations, a clean slate,
a sky wiped clear of clouds,

but only as long as you meet them all.

Every single one.

I love you by smothering you into me,
a slow suffocation, a deep dive
into the lung, the blood, the bone.
Being me. Mine. Of me. My own.

Then I release you
to your own devices, as long as our days
fill with work.

I’ll feed you but you won’t know what,
some days it’s love, some days disappointment.
I sing while I cook, and my voice already knows

whether this will be your last meal.

Then I plant ferns in you,
their delicate, unfurling fronds,
and water you daily
a steady drip, a dark stain
on the earth, so you can thrive.
So you can thrive.
So you can thrive.

Buy my book

A wild thing
chained to my garden plot.

Leave a comment

the wall,
and the house,
and us sitting inside it.

All of us, vessels pouring into vessels,
filters of the universal knowledge;
consciousness as a collective

all alive, less aware than the dead,

all dead waiting for the next lesson,

unborn.

Do you see
why hatred
splits the body?

Why war is amputation without anesthetic,
suicide of your past or your future,
a hand cutting its own fingers?

Do you feel how
greed is the stomach
burning itself?

Do you swell with the hatred as
autoimmune disease?

A single human swollen with rot,
like a corpse in the river,
has all of us drowning with it.

The water goes into all mouths.

The Bemba know:
put the wrongdoer
in the center,
remind him

he is good,
he is loved,
he is us.

Do you see me
when you look in the mirror?

I am the question
asking itself
through your mouth.

Do you see yourself?

You are a God
reading a God,
trying to remember
what it knows
without the filter.

We are the glasses, yes,
but what if we are also

the haze?

And the divine is not up there
but here
in the space
between

your breath

and mine.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link to buy the deer some fodder instead.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon. If you boycott Amazon and would still like to read it, please send me a private message - I will grant you a paid subscription for as long as you need to read it here on Substack.

If you liked this poem, you might also like:

Always complained he wanted boys. Boys.

Dad thought I'm soft. Got rock instead
the sort that strikes sparks when you try
to hit it wrong. Put the pill of expectations
in my mouth, wanted me to swallow like a good girl
but I spat out blueprints. I grew teeth.

They say a daughter is a rehearsal
for grace. They say honor thy father
but what if thy is a house on fire
and honor is the gasoline?
I am the prophet of my own exodus.

I have been to the altar of saints to kiss it
and the altar was a mirror
and your God said I AM THAT I AM
so I said me too, weirdo. Me too.

But I’ll never wear your white.

You don’t get the bended-knee devotion,
that grows through horse blinders, instead
I give you an automated gun loaded with
a million questions, demands, what ifs.

Speak! Faster!

You want hymns? I'll give you inventory:

Item: one daughter, faulty. Refuses kneeling and kissing icons.
Item: one woman, coin-operated. Insert respect, get respect. Insert lies, GTFO.
Item: catalogue of failures, leather-bound, impossible to debug.

My mother tongue is not enough.
My father's language: you bitch.
I learned fluency in both. Then I learned

the spelling of I owe you nothing.

When I say I am whole, I mean:
the crack healed crooked. When I say
I am good, I mean: I grew tissue
over the burns. When I say
I love you, I mean: you best not fuck up.

Leave a comment

Yes the mountain is big,
but the spore cracked it open.
Yes the glacier is huge,
but the lichen still eats it,
millimeter by millimeter,
turning ice-time into soil-time,
into the future tense of grass.

I believe in the weed in the intersection,
the dandelion that doesn’t read the polls,
oh it didn’t get the memo about inevitability,
it just shows up yellow-fisted and stubborn
to the parking lot’s party, to the concrete’s dominion of no.

SO.

The tyrant wants you to believe in his forever.
Wants you sleepless, scrolling, swallowing the feed
like it’s medicine, as if it’s truth, since the algorithm
learned your despair and serves it back with ads
for weighted blankets and micro-dosing kits
in a business model built on your mental collapse.

But read the trees!

Read the birch passing sugar to the Doug fir in a drought.
See the mother stump feeding her children two decades past,
the glucose highway humming through the dark,
the mycorrhizal fuck you to the logger’s saw,
to the fire, to the Forbes list of trees most likely to succeed.

The forest doesn’t ask permission to forest.
It just keeps sending.

And you,

yes, you, the one who thinks you’re out of fight,

the one doomscrolling at 1 AM with your phone at 9%
and your hope at empty, at fumes, at way past fumes

You’re already a node in the network.
Your body is a broadcasting tower you can’t switch off.

The neighbor you checked on? Signal sent.
The mutual aid box you stocked? Signal sent.
The old man you shopped for? Signal sent.
The poor woman you crowdfunded for? Signal sent.
The text to your congressperson that felt like screaming
into a canyon? Signal sent.

The mycelia never asks if it’s working.
They just keep threading through the dark,
chemical telegraph passing root to root.

Subscribe now

Underground, over ground, hand to hand help:
Feed. Host. Shelter. Fix.
Organize. Stabilize. Grow. Start.
Write. Paint. Sing. Chant.
Spread. Share. Leak. Encrypt.
Picket. Strike. Boycott. Whistleblow.

This is the language that predates the parking lot,
that will outlast the kings, the surveillance state,
the men in red ties who are only ever symptoms,
the fever-spike announcing an infection
we’ve been hosting since the original sin of believing
some of us are trees and some of us are timber.

The wound is growing new skin.
The boot teaches the neck to be stronger.
Poison creates its own antidote.

I contradict the headlines!

I contradict the men who built their thrones on graves!
I sing against the algorithm, against the feed,
against the learned helplessness they’re selling
like it’s wisdom, like it’s realism,
like giving up is the same as growing up.

Yes the boat’s taking water!
But we won’t just lie and drown.

I know better.

And I call it.

I call you, exhausted one.

The boat is sinking and you’re learning to swim.
The boat is sinking and you’re learning to swim.

The boat is sinking and look at you,

YOU

You’re learning how to swim.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link to buy the deer some fodder instead.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon.

both stuck, one paper jammed, the other
trying to find words for spinning
how the highway turned to wall,
then sky, then nothing at all.

Steel crumples like paper.
The body sees through glass.

The airbag’s kiss still printed
on his temple, sweet violence,
the bruise that shows you lived

and you can’t tell the difference
between saved and ruined for days after.

I asked if he wanted to be hugged
and his face broke open, a dam
no one builds to last. Yes,
he said. Just yes.

What is a hug but proof
the world hasn’t ended,
that someone will stand
in the ordinary fluorescent light
and say: you’re still here.

When the car flipped at 110,
did you see your mother’s kitchen?

When time turned into taffy,
did the text about trash still matter?
when the world
turned on its axis,
when you became the spin?

He stood in complete
silence for minutes,
touching his own arms,
testing what was real,
what was still contained,
remembering how to person.

Shock is the body’s white noise.
You enter a room and forget
why you came. The mind
stuck buffering at 33%.

The soul likes to move
through silence,
metal and speed, too,
the moment before

the windshield invents
a new movie, one that sucks.

How small we are
when the airbag blooms
when someone asks
are you hurt, are you ok?
and the answer is just
touch. Just: prove I’m not dust.

All our little furies
the email, the bills, the slight
from yesterday’s meeting,
they scatter like birds
when the guardrail comes.

Fucking printer.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work!

Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and essays or dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link to buy the deer some fodder instead.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon.

the sky crying
a thousand meters up

my face crying
just eye-level

both of us
making the ground soft

I walk down birch street
or I sit against the pine
bark pressing wet through my shirt
and the dark is so thick
I could be anyone

rain on my shoulders
rain from my eyes
meeting somewhere around my collarbones
mixing

nobody can identify the origin
of a water drop
once it’s already moving downhill

grandma said crying dirties the face
but rain cleans it
so maybe I am
washing from the inside

the chapters close
when you stop holding the pages open
my hands are tired
so I let go

and the book gets heavy with water
swells and crinkles, buckling
unreadable like my eyes

its way of letting go
of the hardness

under the tree the roots are drinking
what the sky gives them
what I give them

drinking
drinking

a worm surfaces
because even the ground is too full
even the ground says
I can’t hold anymore, ok?

and I think
me too

when I walk home
my shoes make that sound
squelch squelch
rain outside
rain inside
both going

down in my shoes

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading my work! Hi, I’m Nicole. You can read here a bit about myself! I write poems when I’m angry, fiction when I’m hopeful, and dystopias when I’m paying attention.

If you’d like to support my writing, or my slightly unhinged hobby of feeding deer in the backyard, please consider subscribing, sharing, or becoming a paid subscriber.

And if a subscription isn’t for you, you can always use my Buy Me a Coffee link to buy the deer some fodder instead.

I am a published writer. Curriculum of Feelings is a haunting, six-part journey that spans centuries and species, a visceral exploration of the “Problem of Evil.”
Through a collection of short stories, you follow five distinct vessels: a poetess silenced by her world, a slave who finds freedom in language, a tree that witnesses history’s worst acts, a whale carrying a dying song, and a boy tracking a collapsing future. Each life is a lesson in humility, humanity, and pain.

You can buy my book on Amazon.

If you liked this poem, you might like: