Every semester,
enter a room
full of people
who did not choose
to meet you.

Public Speaking.

Equally required and dreaded.

It sits on the degree audit
like a gauntlet.

A box
between them
and anywhere else
they would rather be.

They arrive
already rehearsing
their objections.

I hate speaking.

I’m terrible at this.

I’ll never need it.

Which is fascinating,
because no one says,

I hope my ideas
remain trapped
inside me.

I was the teenager
who opened her mouth
and nothing came out.

I was the high school
dropout who fainted
from fear
just walking
down a school corridor.

The first speeches
are exactly
what fear
looks like
when given
a time limit.

Hands
looking for somewhere
to belong.

Voices
forgetting
their own weight.

Entire bodies
trying to disappear
while standing

at the front of a room.

Then something
almost imperceptible
begins to happen.

A sentence
lands.

A story
survives
being spoken aloud.

A laugh breaks
the tension.

And the room
begins
to teach itself.

One student
finds
their voice.

Another realizes
their own fear
looks remarkably
similar.

Confidence,
it turns out,
is surprisingly
sticky.

Sometimes
it spreads
by osmosis.

Watching
someone survive
the thing
you fear.

Sometimes
by compassion.

Seeing
a classmate
forget
their words.

Lose their place.

Recover.

Applauding
not because
the speech
was perfect.

Because
they kept going.

They discover
the audience
was hoping
they would succeed
all along.

At the same time,
another kind
of attention
is quietly forming.

Not simply how to speak.

How to listen.

How to notice
when conviction arrives
before evidence.

How language can illuminate.

And manipulate.

Every generation believes
propaganda
belongs
to another place.

Another century.

As though persuasion
only becomes dangerous

when spoken
with another person’s
accent.

Critical thinking
is less about having
the right answers
than recognizing
when someone
is trying to borrow
your certainty.

By the final speeches,

many of them
are still nervous.

But nervous
and incapable
are different species.

Confidence,
it turns out,
accumulates
like muscle.

One repetition.

Then another.

Until the thing
that once felt impossible
becomes
something your body knows
how to do.

The room does not eliminate fear.

It changes
where it lives.

Listen, child, my only blood,
I have for you a quest.
To be the next great queen who rules,
You’ll have to travel west.

To start with our sad history:
Our blood was royal once,
And so shall be for us again,
When you regain that front.

The king, as most do know him,
Married into my line.
My parents were the rulers,
So he shared what was mine.

Until but two years later,
He wished me put aside,
He found a “better” woman,
To mold into his bride.

And we were banished, darling,
Us princess babe and queen,
Dwelt deep in woodland outskirts,
To plan revenge unseen.

Through these long years I’ve trained you,
With mettle and with sword,
The time comes to move swiftly,
And earn the final word.

But my eyes now grow heavy,
I may not see this through,
Yet though I will not reach my dream,
It burns strong still in you.

So charge, dear princess, now full-grown,
Go fight by any means,
To see yourself o’erthrow the king,
And be crowned the rightful queen.

October’s first cold morning and I could actually feel the chill

Like the air touching my skin is saying, “hey I’m here”

The Sun’s had the upper hand for ten months straight

But lost its battle by the eleventh

Maples went all-in on red this year

Like they’re not scared to burn out fast

Now they’re dropping leaves everywhere-

Not sad, just tired of holding on

I love how they fall slow

Like they’re trying to find out if they’re capable of flying

On the way down

They hit the sidewalks

And just stay there, no fuss

I walk home, kicking through them

It makes me think that maybe it’s ok to lose stuff sometimes.

Trees do it every year and there fine

Bare, but fine

I thought that summer died

But it didn’t

It just left, and autumn didn’t cry about it

Learning that letting go doesn’t have to be loud
Been trying to grasp that

it’s a wooden bar
a house whiskey
and a shelf guinness
the game’s on 
pints rest on the front
edge of a coaster
because the bar’s slanted
who knows how old it is
i know who: the people who
come here because
the people who
come here
come here
have always come here
for a hundred years
the old guys in jumpers
and the young guy with them
the ex-footballer bellied up
and the couple in their spots
they speak a common
language that’s mine
and not mine
in the morning i’ll be gone
and when the sun finally
swallows this dumb globe
she’ll drink the last few
patrons still sipping a pint

Why does goodbye this year feel like a failure?
This June didn’t knit itself together as usual,
didn’t drape itself across my shoulders
and didn’t comfort me as I cried into the night.
Nothing seemed to work out the way it should:
coffee left half-sipped in the mug on the table,
spoon almost still in motion from stirring;
words caught in the back of my throat,
more of a burn than just a tickle; 
poems whirring around in my mind,
unwritten and furious for lack of fruition.
Why does goodbye always feel like a failure,
even when “hello, July” is right around the corner?

the final day
you’d think I was implying the last of LexPoMo
or June
but not so
I moved house today
the final bits carried across the gravel drive  up the stairs  into the door and room where they feel so familiar
yet hold entirely new existences
this is what it is to be on an adventure
while staying right where you are
commiting to a place
digging deep to discover the rich soil and soul that resides in the nooks and crannies of one place
today I move from one place on the compound ‘back’ to the other
back in parenthesis because it is never the same
over three years I have been an observer of my own dream
living next door to the will to persevere and the gumption to keep going
somehow
someway
some bit took me by my big girl panties
and threw me into my own fire
not to burn
but to live
thank you LexPoMo for this final day
thank you June for this ride of 2026
thank you EncaustiCastle Compound
for one more chance to thrive

I love thee
Let’s count my ways

I love your fingers and your toes
The way you wrinkle your nose

How you walk with a proud sway
and whenever it’s time to go
You always think of a reason to stay

I love you when you sleep
I love you when you’re awake

I love you most when we 
Ball up together on the couch like
A big ole
Anaconda snake

He’s kissed by the desert air,
buffeted in the night over peaks
and into landing, homecoming.
The mountains also remember him,
with a cool kiss in the morning air.
The beloved too recalls a kiss
with a poem and a promise,
        Brokeback  Mountain
        she said. It means
remembrance and yet a sweet
bitterness but more,
love of a kind to last,
which is not some small comfort,
not to be mourned, no—
but celebrated
as rare and lovely
as our Sandia range
is eternal and blue ,
under a too-blue sky.

is in my pocket
and in my heart,
always has been since the start.
why did I run?
why did I hide?
from what has always been inside.
I always looked at the earthly things,
even when they didn’t suit me.
I tried to squeeze myself into a spot
where I wasn’t supposed to be-
trying to blend in
where no one could see,
but something special was looming in me.
Over time, the light inside
became too bright to try to hide.
Now every day I praise and sing
the glory and blessings bestowed upon me.
Each day more I forget my name,
and I embrace the Jesus in me:
walking in the light,
doing what’s right,
and being as kind as can be.