In my own Ink

03/17/2026

A perfectly reasonable plan
Would you maybe like to meet somewhere in the woods far enough from the road that no one hears us except the trees and whatever lives quietly between them? We could stand there for a moment pretending we are two normal people taking a peaceful walk. Then we scream. Not the polite kind people tuck behind smiles. I mean the kind that climbs out of the ribs after years of being well behaved. The kind that startles the birds into flight and makes the trees wonder what humans are carrying now. Everything at once. All the small disappointments. All the almosts. All the words we swallowed because they were inconvenient. Just open our mouths and let the forest have it. The woods have held worse things. They’ve watched people bury grief there for centuries. They will survive two more cracking open for a minute. And when it’s finished, when the quiet returns and our lungs feel empty we will dust the leaves from our hands, walk back out of the trees and get coffee like two people who definitely did not just scream into the dark.

03/16/2026

If karma is real
If karma is real, why does the kindest person I know flinch at loud voices while the cruel sleep soundly? Why does soft hearts collect bruises like unpaid bills, while sharp tongues build empires? I have watched good people apologize for surviving. I have watched bad people call it strategy. So tell me- is the universe kind or just indifferent? Does justice move slowly or did we invent it to help us fall asleep? Maybe karma is not a vending machine. Maybe it doesn’t spit out balance on demand. Maybe it’s quieter than that. Maybe the good suffer because the feel. Because they refuse to calcify. Because staying open is a risk. And maybe the bad succeed because they severed something that makes the climb easier. But her is what I know: a life without conscience is not a victory. A heart without tenderness is not wealth. If karma is real, perhaps it lives in the way you wake up with yourself. In the silence after the applause. In the mirror. I don’t have perfect answers, I have questions and a pulse that still chooses softness anyway. And maybe that is the only rebellion that matters.

03/11/2026

A letter I will never send
I don’t know how to say this out loud without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. So I’m writing it where no one has to react.
I get attached. I get scared when people matter to me. And then I start measuring every word, every silence, every feeling. Trying to make sure I’m not too much. I learned somewhere that love and care were fragile, that needing too much could make them disappear. So I learned how to be quiet. I learned how to look okay. I learned how to hold things in my body instead of my mouth. When someone sees me- I want to lean in and I want to run at the same time. I want to say everything. I want to say nothing. I want to be held without asking. I’m scared of disappointing you, I’m scared that if you knew how much you mattered, it would change something. I’m scared that needing you makes me weak, even though part of me knows that isn’t true. There are things I didn’t say today. Not because they weren’t real, but because my system went quiet to protect the connection. Please know this-even if I never say it; my silence is not emptiness. It’s fullness with no where safe to go. I’m learning. I’m trying. I’m allowed to take this slowly. For tonight, that is enough.

03/10/2026

Temple, through me
When I learned about you, it felt like permission. Permission to notice too much. Permission to flinch at noise and still be intelligent. Permission to need pressure, structure, quiet explanations instead of smiles. You didn’t make yourself smaller to survive the world. You studied it. Mapped it. Asked why it hurt and then redesigned the places where pain lived. I recognize myself in that. In the way you trusted sensation over performance. In how you believed safety could be engineered when it wasn’t freely given. They called you difficult. I know that word. It’s what they use when someone refuses to translate their nervous system into something more convenient. You taught me that overwhelm isn’t weakness-it’s information. That sensitivity can become skill when it’s allowed to stay honest. I don’t want to be fixed, I want to be understood the way you understood animals- with patience, with curiosity, with respect for what my body knows before language catches up. You remind me that difference is not a flaw. It’s a lens. And sometimes it’s the clearest one in the room.

DIFFERENT, NOT LESS.

03/10/2026

Final notice: past due
I glance over and the guinea pigs are already halfway done. Hay flying like they are emptying a snow globe filled with responsibility. One is inside the cage scrubbing the pan with the intensity of someone who has watched me say ‘in a minute’ for forty minutes. The other is hauling out old fleece inch by inc, grunting making that angry little wheek sound that means this did not have to be this hard. They rinse, they shake, they lay the fresh fleece down smoothing it with their bodies like tiny interior designers. Tunnels are tested, retested, rejected, accepted. Water bottle? Click, click, perfect flow. They pause, look at me. I know that look. The invoice slams down again, harder.
Final notice: past due
Late fee applied for excessive creativity and avoidance by poetry. Interest compounded by emotional processing. One of them stamps it ‘Paid in hay or else!’ I sigh, I laugh, I grab the supplies. They step back, arms crossed, supervising. This was the plan all along. Sometimes the imagination just needed one more lap before the body could move. Sometimes the guinea pigs say okay shows over. Now clean.

03/09/2026

Just let her see the morning
Saturday night did not come quietly. It arrived in flashing lights and rushing footsteps, in hospital hallways that smelled of antiseptic and fear that sat heavy in my chest. Then they asked me something no daughter is ever ready for. A decision balanced on the edge of life. The room felt smaller after that. Like the walls had leaned into listen. I stood beside her bed holding her hand like if I let go the night might take her with it. I didn’t know the right answer. I only knew love. So I prayed. Not the calm kind of prayer people speak in steady voices. Mine was desperate. Trembling. Falling apart between breaths. God, please. Just let her make it through the night. Let the morning find her breathing. Let me hear her voice again. The minutes stretched and twisted into something endless. Machines hummed softly. Nurses moved in quiet circles. And I stood there still holding her hand waiting somewhere between fear and faith. Then it happened. She spoke. Just a few words. And for a second my mind couldn’t catch up with what my ears had heard. I remember standing there thinking ‘oh my God! She’s talking!’ I just had a conversation with her. And suddenly the night loosened its grip, hope rushed back into the room, and the prayer I whispered in fear became one of gratitude. Because sometimes miracles don’t shake the earth. Sometimes they sound like your mothers voice returning while your still holding her hand. And in that hospital room, with her hand still in mine, I realized God had carried us both through the night.

Saturday March 7 was the longest, scariest night of my life. I want to thank Jenn for just being her amazing self and the whole Crumbl staff. ❤️

03/07/2026

Untitled
It comes when I’ve already done everything you told me to do. I breathed. I waited. I swallowed it. I tried to be normal enough to deserve peace. My head is on fire and you keep calling it a mood. The thought doesn’t whisper. It snaps. It says: Atleast this would be real, not this invisible chaos you keep pretending isn’t happening because you can’t see it. My body understands immediately- before shame, before your morality, before your lectures about coping skills that assume I haven’t already tried to survive. My skin stops being a body and starts being a boundary I’m furious I keep having to explain. And my brain swears this will fix it, just long enough to breathe. Not because I want pain. Because I want quiet. Because I want one thing to make sense in a world that keeps blaming me for being overwhelmed. I don’t act. Not because the urge isn’t real, but because I’m already carrying the weight of your assumptions, your stigma, your lazy conclusions. So don’t call it weakness, don’t call it a choice. Call it what happens when a person is drowning and you keep correcting how they move their arms.

03/06/2026

Erin in my brain
Therapy is basically Erin strolling through my brain like she just bought the property and is deeply concerned about the wiring. She flips on the light in a room labeled “romantic decisions.” The bulb flickers. She just looks at me “interesting,” she says. The most dangerous word in the English language. She opens a cabinet labeled “men who feel like home.” Inside, one Puerto Rican man and seventeen abandonment triggers. She inhales slowly. The sigh of a woman who went to grad school for this “Kate,” she says gently, “why is there shame in every room?” I cross my arms “it was a gift.” She pulls out a dusty heirloom box labeled “trauma responses.” Shakes it. It rattles. “Are we keeping this?” “Yes” I shout “It’s sentimental!” She finds a framed photo of “Turning over the keys too fast!” It’s crooked. She straightens it. Then takes it off the wall. I gasp like she just insulted my grandmother. Meanwhile she’s rearranging furniture in my psyche, moving “boundaries” to the front door and placing “self respect” in the center of the living room like it’s finally allowed to be seen. At one point she just stands there, hands on hips, looking around my brain like “This is how you’re living?!” And I’m in the corner clutching an emotional raccoon I found in 2003 going, “you can’t throw it out, it followed me home” she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t judge. She just gently says, “we can upgrade this space” and honestly she’s right. But also, don’t touch my sentimental chaos without supervision.

Posted by special request.

03/05/2026

If you would like me to write a special poem just for you, tell me your story. Also poems for special occasions or really whatever.
✨ $15 short personalized poem
✨ $30 medium personalized poem
✨ $50 long custom poem

03/05/2026

Hello kitty morning
A quiet kingdom on a wooden table. Keys scattered like yesterday’s decisions. A tumbler standing guard in the background and in the center- a small white face with a red bow and the calm of a creature who has never rushed a morning in her life. Steam rises like soft prayers. Inside the cup, coffee swirls dark as midnight thoughts, and a silver spoon rests like a tiny lighthouse in a sea of warmth. Hello kitty watches it all without a mouth to speak, but somehow says everything: Slow down. Breathe. The world can wait until the first sip. And somewhere between the heat of the mug and the quiet of the kitchen, God is there too, in the ordinary miracle of a warm cup, a steady morning and a heart still learning how to begin again.

-In my own Ink

03/05/2026

I love Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein ❤️❤️