I am a saltwater soul with blue ridge blood peaking like Pisgah while the Atlantic ocean runs through my veins. The sun sings my name in Appalachian folksong and I set it with my fingertips dancing new constellations into East Coast skies. Morning seafoam kisses my ankles pleading with me to stay another morning while…
Category: growth
My Future Self Needs My Current Self’s Strength
Six months from now I am looking back at myself in this moment soft with pride.
Thalassic Rubatosis
I sit down and sink in, letting the sun singe my skin while I bury sand deep beneath my nail beds. This is where I feel most connected to you, your heartbeat forever in time with the tide and your voice echoed in the wind’s hush, hush, hush. You are the gulls, the gulf, and…
Things I’ve Learned In My First Year.
1. Your happiness is not invincible. Though you may feel the brightest, most concentrated bliss you have ever known, something will eventually knock on your door to knock you down; happiness is a cycle and to believe we can ever reach a peak of it is to live in a fool’s chimera. Learn to accept…
Growing, Continued.
One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is look myself in the eyes and admit I deserve more than I’m being shown, by myself and those around me. My body deserves full, sufficient meals and my mind has a right to clarity. Decency and patience are not luxuries — they should be…
Giving and Taking and Balancing and Falling
I’m tired of writing about the cataclysm of last year and how much I’ve grown since then. I’m tired of this sunshine echo in my poetry and prose. I’m tired of trying not to seem pretenious, but in the process of doing so, sounding even more pretentious than the beginning. While this new voice is…
Cleansing
I have been rinsing myself of everything the year left on me cleansing myself of the scars, the wounds, the war. I am taking a brush and painting over all the acrylic blues they covered me in, letting my watercolored soul meet the sun once again. I am meeting myself for the first time, shaking…
In 5 Years’ Time
60 months. 262 weeks. 1,821 days. 43,701 hours. Has it actually been five years since I last saw you, since you passed? I can’t really begin to comprehend that, honestly. Half the time, I can convince myself it feels like just yesterday but to be candid, it feels like it’s been a decade. You missed…
Delicacy
This past year has easily been one of the most brutal years of my life. After losing myself and everyone around me, I found myself collapsed and at a loss of direction. Where do you walk when you’ve lost all sense of navigation? Who do you look to when everyone has turned away? I found…
Personal Complexities
You know a version of me. The girl who wears that old Elvis Costello shirt or the first year who gets toast at 1:00 PM in the afternoon; grape jelly on one slice and butter on the other. The blonde hair who sits in the second row or the young woman who has a blog….
I Am From…
I am from Jaysun and Anne Stockdell-Giesler, from an artist and a writer. From learning to never end a sentence with a preposition by the age of 6 and laughing along as my math homework stumped even my father. I am from a long history of English degrees, of creative writing and PhD’s. From the…
I Write Best When I’m Falling Apart, But How Do I Write When I’m Falling Into Place?
I want to be writing happy things; words of growth and strength, of liberation and lack of toxicity, all of which I feel in more concentration than I ever have. Despite their presence, though, the words just won’t come forth and present themselves. All that pours out is playlists and nostalgia, the longing for what…
Wildflower
I was born a chrysanthemum, blooming in the fall and finding home in cold winters. Wrapped myself in my mother and father, the three of us always growing as one. Beautiful and soft, full of layers and layers of petals of which the years would pull apart slowly revealing the center of who I was…
Rewrite The Written
They say I have your words your state of mind and your empathetic demeanor. They say I carry you and your heart alongside mine and your pen in my hand. Am I your walking ghost? Am I a disarrayed collection of all you were, masked behind all your features and my own green eyes? I…
Coddiwomple
Life is really, truly, wholeheartedly beautiful. In every stupid overused cliche, in each song about feeling reborn, I guess there really is some truth to be found. I have only been here for ten days and I feel more consistently alive than I have in longer than I can remember. There are no spouts of…
I Only Told The Moon
I feel scared and alone. Now, I know I am not actually alone; I have loving support just a call away and an entire set of heartbeats backing my steps. Knowing that doesn’t stop the feeling, though. No matter how many times I chant a mantra of serenity, the harsh reality of being cast into…
Illusionary Hopes
I need to let go of the illusion that it could have been any different. Any of it, really. I couldn’t have saved her. Cancer isn’t something you can just hope away. No matter what I did, nothing could’ve changed the terminal diagnosis hanging over her head. Not three thousand glasses of lemon water, not…
I Learned A Lot About Being A Friend When I Was Alone
I learned a lot about being a friend when I was alone. Crowded rooms are consistently the most complicated and lonely places to find oneself. Standing alone while clusters of your former friends close themselves off to you is more painful than comprehensible. You lose basic knowledge of how to stand comfortably, of what to…
Augie
Echoed footsteps on cold tile and sisterly giggles filling the murky summer air. “Augie slow down! Your legs are toooo looooong.” Listen closely and you can hear the salt water pool splashing and circulating, only a window away. Breathe deeply and you can taste it. You can count the people we’ve loved by the freckles…
The Last Six Months, Sonicallly
Someone New // Banks Hard Feelings/Loveless // Lorde Supercut // Lorde You Should Talk // Fletcher Sad Beautiful Tragic // Taylor Swift Cotton Candy Skies // Sean Bolton Back To December // Taylor Swift Appointments // Julien Baker All These Years // Camila Cabello Reflections // The Neighbourhood These Songs Are Yours // Andrew Douglas…
Four Years, 224 Posts, And 57,288 Words Later
Here we are. It’s been four years since this little blog came into being. Four entire years of poetry, prose, short stories, and everything my mind could muster in between. You can find stolen glances of arguably the most significant years of my life on here, little intimate views into my candid mind, an open diary….
Never Read
I have posts upon poems that will never see the light of day, not because they aren’t worthy but rather because they are from a time I have since grown. They no longer reflect my current composure and it would be almost a lie to send them out into the world now, as I no…
Kairosclerosis
For the first time in my life, I am happy alone. I don’t yearn for someone, for somebody to hold or to hold me. For the first time, I don’t want to be involved, to have my name constantly connected to another’s. I want to be my own and my own entirely. This is a…
