[emr]

my collections, zines, portfolio, and some notes. do not redistribute, contact for use. site currently under construction.

for more writing, you can find my casual blog on spacehey and my academic blog on wordpress.
my published poetry is available on eunoia review

this series of poems touches on chronic pain, body image and mental health. stay safe and please read with caution.

dissonance
(body as traitor, body as home)my body hums in the wrong key.
every movement out of tune,
every breath caught between chords.i try to love her.
i do.
i smooth lotion over skin like an apology,
dress her soft,
talk her gentle.
but she screams anyway.the joints lock like doors i’ve lost the keys to.
the lungs rattle their protest.
the spine curves away from kindness.
i call her mine—
she answers with silence or static.some days i wake up
and she fits like a borrowed coat.
not right,
but close enough to pass in.
other days
she’s nothing but a siren wailing beneath my ribs.i don’t know how to hold her anymore.
i don’t know how to leave.we share a name
and still mispronounce it.the first time you left your body
they said it was nothing.
just a brush of skin, a passing touch—
but your hands didn’t belong to you anymore.you felt yourself slip,
a slow dissolve between the edges of your skin
and the hollow space inside your chest.their fingers were strangers
mapping places you never chose to be known.you wanted to scream,
but your voice was folded away—
a paper bird trapped in a glass cage.stop pretending, they said,
like your body wasn’t breaking in half.you learned to ghost yourself on purpose,
to fold away the parts that hurt,
to leave pieces of you
like breadcrumbs in the dark.sometimes you catch a glimpse
of that frightened child,
still half here, half gone—
watching from just beyond the mirror,waiting for the moment
when you might finally come back.symptom diary
5 feb. // pain under left rib. dreamed i was made of glass again.
11 feb. // not sure if i’m tired or dying. does it matter?
20 feb. // forgot how to explain it. again.
28 feb. // skin feels thin, like the world could tear right through me.
7 mar. // silence louder than the ache today.
15 mar. // a hiccup in time – the body stutters, remembers too much.
22 mar. // hands don’t obey. the disconnect is a slow slide.
30 mar. // breath catches on shadows. light is too sharp, too much.
6 apr. // smile feels borrowed, stretched too thin to be real.
14 apr. // sometimes pain sounds like a song i don’t know the words to.
21 apr. // muscles forget how to move – like a language lost in translation.
29 apr. // dizziness spins stories i don’t want to hear.
5 may. // numbness crawling up my spine, quiet and patient.
12 may. // laughter tastes strange today.
18 may. // the weight of my own skin feels unfamiliar.
25 may. // words fall apart before they reach my mouth.
2 jun. // restless nights with restless bones.
10 jun. // light flickers (inside and out) like a faulty bulb.
17 jun. // the ache blooms where no one can see.
24 jun. // breathing, just barely. like holding onto a thread.
28 jun. // joint pain. again.
3 jul. // can’t explain the tired. just tired.
9 jul. // woke up. wrong side of my body.
14 jul. // headache. no energy to fight it.
20 jul. // forgot if i took meds. maybe not.
26 jul. // skin itchy but no rash. weird.
1 aug. // dizzy. sit down.
7 aug. // brain fog. words missing.
13 aug. // pain sharp but quiet. confusing.
19 aug. // tired. always tired. still tired.
25 aug. // can’t move. don’t try.
31 aug. // nothing left to say.how to leave your body without dying (ii)
first:
forget the order of your limbs.
let the arms unbutton themselves.
unscrew the legs from the socket of gravity.the spine unzips with a soft click.
you step out like steam
rising from a cracked teacup.the room does not notice.
the world does not blink.next:
fold your body into origami –
crane, lotus, coffin.
tuck it under the bed
with the other ghosts.float,
but not upwards.
not heavenward.
float sideways,
into the wallpaper.become pattern.
become hum.
become whatever the mirror refuses to hold.if you see a younger version of yourself,
do not speak.
they are trying to stay.the sky might peel open –
ignore it.
it always wants a witness.time will lose its laces.
you may drift across calendars
like dust on an untouched shelf.do not worry.
this is the closest thing to comfort
that some of us ever learn.eventually,
the body may call you back –
with pain, or hunger, or a name you still answer to.you can return,
or not
either way,
you’ll be changed.on waking
waking feels like surfacing through wet concrete. the light is always too loud. your body, returned without warning, doesn’t fit right – like it’s been borrowed by something heavier overnight. there’s no grand re-entry, just the familiar ache drape across your frame like a weighted blanket you never asked for. everything is stiff, swollen with silence. even the air hurts.you take inventory before moving. neck: immobile. hips: burning. fingers: curled and unfamiliar. your first thought isn’t “i’m alive,” but “how bad is it today?” the kind of question you learn to ask quietly, as if the pain might hear you and answer loudly.you stare at the ceiling and try to bargain. if i can sit up, i’ll go to school. if i can stand, i’ll shower. if i can fake it long enough, no one will know. the ceiling offers no reply. it never does.outside, life continue without you. birds are screaming like everything is fine. the neighbour’s car engine coughs itself awake. somewhere, people are standing up without thinking about it, walking without limping, existing without apology. you’re not angry at them, just envious. tired.you try to move, but your body resists. not with defiance, but resignation. a kind of exhausted no that lives in the marrow. you shift anyway, slowly, pulling yourself together like wet paper – fragile, liable to tear. eventually, you sit up. not because you’re ready, but because the world will not wait.you wonder, not for the first time, how many more mornings your body will forget to be a body. and how many more times you’ll forgive it for forgetting

stomach acid - 30 and the council cut the branches off the trees - lxxiv were first published on eunoia review. you, who stepped through this gate and stomach acid - 30 both contain holocaust imagery, and the latter refers to eating disorders. please stay safe and read at your own volition.

you, who stepped through this gate
for my great-grandparents, presumed murdered at auschwitz.it snowed the day i walked where you vanished.
soft, like breath.
cold, like silence.
i watched it gather on rusted rails,
fall into footprints i couldn’t see
but felt.they say snow makes everything quiet,
but my bones were loud with you.
you,
who stepped through this gate
in fear,
and never left.i stepped out.
i got to leave.
i walked through the place
where your name
was unspoken,
your body
reduced to smoke
and silence.and still—
the snow fell like it had nothing to do with us.
like it had never heard of gas or fire,
like it didn’t know the word camp
could mean anything but safety.
like it could cover the earth
without apology,
without memory,
without shame.as if it had the right
to be beautiful here,
as if it had never settled
on barbed wire
or bone.it stung.
it stunned.
because it was beautiful,
because i could see it.
because you never got to.i wanted to gather the snow in my hands
and say
look—
i’m still here.
your blood still walks these paths.
your name
still breathes in my mouth.
and the snow,
this snow,
falls for you, too.this day creases at the edges
& i am wearing
a sweater too warm for spring, a secret
pressed against my skin. the bus leaves
without me, its shadow stretching long
and gone.i watch clouds drag their bellies over houses,
the rooftops aching for sun.
there are flowers breaking
through the pavement
& i think of something
i can’t quite name.my friends are smoking somewhere,
making the wind heavier with laughter.
i said i’d meet them, but the morning
got tangled in my shoes.
i count the cracks in the road instead.
my hands smell like lavender & dust.it’s been days since i’ve dreamed
of anything but open doors.
i go to the park for quiet.
the silence doesn’t look at me.the sky feels brittle, as though
a single breath could shatter it. i am
pacing inside myself, peeling back
the layers. i sit beneath a tree,
watch its shadow fold itself into the ground.there are petals in my lap,
fallen from branches i didn’t touch—
soft reminders
that some things break gently.the council cut the branches off the trees - lxxiv
the council cut the branches off the trees
on the street where i live. towering
sycamores cower under the moonlit sky,
silent screams echo through darkness.my neighbour four doors down decorates
what remains with twinkling fairy lights,
left red and green when they stay up after
christmas. decorated death matchesperfectly with the brightly-lit funeral
director that perches on the corner, opposite
its equally cheerful sister-store selling
gravestones and coffins and caskets.the egyptians used sycamore for
sarcophagi, but the trees that the council
cut the branches off were just left
for waste. an eyesore, the stumpsstand idle as the nearby lamposts,
but they produce no light, no
oxygen, no tangible purpose
other than to shrink with shameat their perception. the council cut
the branches off the trees on the
street where i live.stomach acid - 30
i learn that the growling white noise of my stomach
is the one situation that i can keep firmly pressed
under my thumb. my oma was smuggled from germany
to england by the shadows of people she was too young
to now have memory of, but eighty-five years later i am
trying to shrink myself to insignificance.her parents were too busy being swallowed up by
zyklon b to know their daughters and i wonder if she ever
feels resentful that she was dragged screaming from
her family to live in pain instead of dying in the arms of
her mother. she was too young to remember kristallnacht but
her sisters would tell me that the glittering refractions of
broken glass would have been beautiful were it not for
the seven years that followed.my girlfriend tattooed a star on my ankle when we were
sixteen, and i have never seen my oma so furious as when
she, a dog at its prey, rounded on me with screams of
paskudnik. her tattoo remains embedded on fragile skin,
history injected into the ink. it doesn’t feel like my history,
when i disrespect her memory with my emptiness.i dream about my ergroßeltern and they ask if i know what
it means to be a link in an unbroken chain. my catholic
mother would laugh at the idea, taking pride in the pliers
she used to remove my link. i do not feel unbroken when my
lungs fill with stomach acid as i empty myself, but i tell them
i understand and i tell them i love them.flames flicker in every friday and i cannot help but see
my oma in them. each whisper of light in the dark is a whisper
from the past, a reminder of faith that refuses to die even
if it’s quenched by acid. in the quiet, i thumb through photo albums,
looking at the sepia-tinted smiles of relatives i never knew but
think about every day. i can’t look in the mirror without seeing
the eyes of my great-great-grandmother who doesn’t know that i exist,
the nose of my great-uncle, the hair of my oma. i see my place
in the tapestry, but i am unable to weave myself into it.i think about wasting away before i can teach my children
the songs of our ancestors, before i can prove that we are still here,
that we were worthy of saving. in the stillness of the night i find
a fragile peace—my oma did not choose escape but she was
gifted it and i cannot let her sacrifice go to waste. i may not be able
to stitch myself back into the tapestry, i can return my link into
the chain, and let my ancestors sew me back in.

all poems from stonefruit were first published on eunoia review, (february 2025). their support is always appreciated.

preface
stonefruit wasn't a collection i set out to write — it found me instead. these poems came together in the quiet spaces, in moments when i wasn't searching for them but they arrived anyway. they spilled out like water overflowing a jar, unexpected and yet impossible to contain. writing this collection felt less like creating and more like uncovering — peeling back the skin of a fragile fruit to find its sweet, sharp insides waiting to be known, a story that was always waiting to be told.

between breaths
there was a field we used to walk through
and the grass bent in the wind like it knew
something we didn’t.
each step left a mark,
a reminder that we were once
more than just the spaces between breaths.back then, the sky was always the same colour —
something just shy of blue,
the way the world looks just before dusk
when the light wraps itself around you,
and you feel like maybe
this moment was always meant to happen.we used to lie there
watching the clouds drift like lost thoughts,
catching glimpses of things we never named
but somehow understood.
your voice would break the silence
with a soft hum,
the kind that the earth makes when it settles into itself.when the birds came,
flying in patterns only trees could read,
their wings cut through the quiet
to remind us that some things are always
moving, even when we don’t see it.i thought i would remember it all—
the way you smiled,
the feel of your hand in mine.
now it slips between fingers
like the light between the trees,
vanishing the moment i reach for it.sometimes when the wind picks up
i go back to that field,
not looking for you
but for the shape of what we left behind.
the sky still holds that same quiet ache,
but now it’s holding something else—
a space i’ll never fill,
no matter how hard i try to make it my own.shadowlines
i grew up in the corner of a map
where the ink bled into the edges,
where fences were a suggestion
and the roads weren’t brave enough to stay.
the field stretched wide
but the sky always stretched wider,
emptiness filling the cracks we couldn’t.you told me once
that shadows have no owners,
just wondering ghosts of bodies
borrowing light.
i traced yours anyway —
hands reaching, shoulders bowed —
as if tethering you to the ground
might stop you from leaving.there’s a kind of ache
that doesn’t break,
only hums like the echo of a storm
that didn’t fall here but tried.
you wore it like an old coat,
worn sleeves hiding
all the apologies you couldn’t give
and the promises you didn’t mean.i could have followed you,
but i stayed behind instead,
tending to the weeds
that whispered your name
in a language only i could understand.
isn't it cruel
that love can bloom
even in barren places?now i count my days
in the sway of cattails,
in the murmur of a creek
that knows my secrets and keeps them.
there’s nothing left of us here,
only shadowlines and sky —
and the ache of your absence,
a song the wind sings
when it thinks i’m not listening.stonefruit
you smelled like summers that ripened too fast,
like stonefruit bruising in the palms of hands
that didn’t know how to hold on without hurting.
your laugh tasted of wild honey,
sharp and sweet and too much at once,
and i drank it down anyway.we met at the riverbend
where water carved a story into stone.
you swore you could hear it,
the way it carried secrets downstream,
the way it didn’t care
what it left behind.
i watched you skip rocks
like you wanted to send them somewhere softer,
but they always sank,
didn’t they?there’s a part of me
still stuck in the heat of that august,
in the way the air pressed heavy
and time melted like wax under sun.
your voice drifted low and slow—
a tongue that could smooth edges
or break hearts.
i learned too late
that it did both.when the summer burned out,
you left me with the smoke,
and i stayed
watching the leaves curl into themselves,
watching the river forget
the shape of your name.
i told myself i wouldn’t write you down
but the words have a way
of finding the page,
don’t they?the memory of you clings
like the bite of an overripe fruit;
too sweet to spit out,
too bitter to swallow.
every summer since gnaws at my edges
with the taste of what i couldn’t save —
a harvest that came
and went
before i could gather it.the orchard
you always said the trees whispered louder at dusk,
their branches brushing secrets against the sky
like hands searching for what they couldn’t hold.
i never heard it,
but i watched the way you stood still
as if the air were telling you a story
that you were too afraid to interruptwe spent that summer
in the orchard no one visited,
your breath heavy with the smell of cider
and something sweeter i couldn’t name.
you taught me how to follow the veins of leaves,
to trace the scars of seasons
in the patterns of decay.
the leaves told stories of endings
before i even learned to listen, and
i told you it was a cruel kind of magic,
but you only laughed —
fading
the way dusk falls
without anyone noticing.sometimes i think we were meant to grow wild,
roots tangled beneath the surface,
branches pulling in opposite directions.
it didn’t matter how close we leaned,
the distance was already there.
you wore it like a second skin,
like you knew this was always the ending.the night you left,
i walked back to the orchard alone.
air so still it felt like a betrayal of movement,
and i could finally hear the trees whisper,
their voices brittle and breaking
like the snap of a twig
beneath an absent weight.they never told me where you went.
i searched anyway—
in the half-rotten apples clinging to branches,
in the shadows of empty baskets left behind.
but some things
don’t belong to you,
no matter how much you want them to.i keep my distance from the orchard now,
but it keeps its distance from me too.
the trees still bend toward the sky,
their branches bare,
still searching for what they’ll never hold —
and each time the wind shifts
i wonder if it carries you with it,
or if i’m still pretending
to feel anything at all.when the tide left
you found me at the water’s edge
where the sea unspooled itself
and left its wreckage on the shore.
shells broken into teeth,
glass worn soft as whispers,
and driftwood too stubborn to sink.you said the tide never really takes,
it only trades —
offering pieces of itself
for whatever it can carry away.
i wondered what it would take from you.
i wondered what it had already taken.that summer we walked the coastline
as if we could map the horizon,
as if the line where the sky meets sea
would give us an answer
instead of a question.
your hands were always full,
cupping sand and water like they wouldn’t
slip through,
but your voice was hollow,
echoing something i couldn’t name,
a wave that couldn’t break.when the storms came,
i found you waist-deep in the waves,
daring them to pull you under
pleading for them to let you go.
i called your name,
but the wind swallowed it whole,
the spray biting my skin
as the sea pretended not to hear.
you came back soaked to the skin,
hair tangled with salt
and eyes colder than the current.
you said the sea keeps everything it wants,
but i knew better —
it leaves enough behind
to remind me of what it took,
of what i couldn’t save.now when i walk the shoreline
your shadow clings to every tidepool,
and every shard of glass polished smooth
cuts me with what i remember.
the horizon still asks its question,
but i stopped trying to answer.
i just listen for your voice in the waves,
trailing off where water meets sand.
empty,
but still clinging
to the shore.we used to call it home
we walked through the woods where moss clung
to stones like secrets too soft to speak,
your hand brushing mine like a leaf falling
before it could reach the ground.
we traced shadows on the forest floor,
drawing paths that never led anywhere,
just circles, soft as rain.i remember how the sun would break through
the canopy in shards of gold,
your laughter carried on the wind
like a song that didn’t need words
but still meant everything.
the river knew everything, you said —
never forgot where it had been,
no matter how far it travelled.we spent that summer trying to forget
where we came from,
outrunning the past
by walking deeper into the woods —
but the earth remembers.
she keeps the footprints,
the spaces between words,
the way we used to lean into each other
like the branches of an oak tree
that never quite reached the sky.when i go back alone,
the silence is heavier than before,
the river running without you besides it.
i wonder if you still walk the same path
and if the trees whisper your name to the wind,
but i gave up asking.
i already know what they’ll say —
some things are meant to stay
buried in the soil
where they can’t be found
but always feel like home.before it even lands
i remember the way your voice slipped
between the cracks of quiet rooms,
soft like the hum of a song
too fragile to finish.
you never said goodbye,
but i felt it in the spaces between your words.we built something from moments
but it was never enough to hold us —
the way we tried to freeze time
only to watch it unravel
like thread pulled too tight,
the fibres fraying before they could settle.i catch myself looking for you
in the places where silence lingers—
the hollow of an empty chair,
the way the wind stirs the curtains
but never settles.
i almost hear you in the soft creak
of the floorboards,
nothing more than a ghost
caught in the dust.i keep reaching for what’s gone
but it slips through my hands
like water slipping through fingers,
the world blurring like watercolour
fading in the rain.
i try to find where you stopped being
real and started being memory,
but the line keeps shifting,
a shadow moving with the light.you left,
but i’m still here waiting
for something to fill the space between us —
wondering if anything ever really
fits the shape of what we lost,
or if we’re just waiting
for a ghost to fill the room.

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