Anthology

About

Hey there. I'm Melissa, with roots in Tennessee, North Carolina, and California. It's a stretch, but I manage. Degrees in communication, law, and dental hygiene. Cat mom to one very spoiled gray cat, Cafezinho. Happily married to Devin, another artist. Gemini. Millennial. Probably in a state of confusion or sleeping.Just here writing like my life depends on it, because most days I think it might.

Subscribe

To be notified by email when I post:

April 10, 2026
"radical acceptance"i fall for magic the same way i bruise:
easily.lately i see this is because
the inexpressible
and the
heat of blood pooling—
these are me,
and were mine first.
what i love i love because
i know my own fingerprints:
the way stars flow so i will
always feel them;
kindness so careful it
shares borders with dishonesty.
the part of me that broke
at such intricate artistry,
was the part of me that rhymed,
was the part of me that made this
for myself to find.lately being here feels lonely,
like searching for a window
in a hall of mirrors, forever
catching my own eye, for once
i'd like to see outside
instead of within.
endlessly learning that
I Am.
endlessly hoping that is
not all there is.melissa suarez

March 9, 2026
the waterBefore the desert there was
the Water, sun-warmed and hazy,
humming with flying life above and
gathered to her boundaries.Kept grass and children
grew up alongside,
fringes of wild algae also, and
weeping trees, leaning over so
deeply to kiss her surface...
It was worth it.Shadowed and cool,
I remember how silky she
could be before I grew up and
earned the degrees between us.I just want to say:
You have always been so deeply life-ridden,
unapologetically life-stricken, really.
I see this because I can.And I remember it all:
The way you move as
storms move across you;
How we would glisten together
in still, sticky heat;
And when we didn't have
enough,
we became small together
and survived.And every time they came,
together we inhaled the winds
of change and they
changed us.I just want to say:It was worth it.melissa suarez

February 2, 2026
what a time to learnI've walked miles through rooms
in other people's houses,
places I remember the smell of when
I light certain candles, I see
midday desert sunlight enveloping
lemon trees and parked cars, settling
into dated kitchens full of food and
well-meaning people—
we were there and
we were going places—
we had hope on tap, living
room,
high ceilings
for everything we could carry.
But I never
before now
had words  touch  me   so   gently.
   I've never been touched so gently.
Have I always been this
   delicate?melissa suarez

January 14, 2026
Let There Be LightLet there be light:      on Sascha’s deformed rib cage      on Renee’s last words to her murderer      on every human.Let there be light on every human,      & if light feels like a blessing,            wherever light feels like a blessing,      let there be light.Let there be light on every human,      & if light feels like a curse,            wherever light feels like a curse,      let there be light.More and radiating and shining and brilliant      and always and everywhere.Let there be light.Let there be light.Let there be light.melissa suarez

January 6, 2026Not so smart,
and quite selfish.Like toddlers screaming
in church,
trying to make their shit
everyone’s problem.I’ve had periods more impressive than
these neverending pissing contests,
Half of us are thinking.Should we just tell them they did it! –
they’re so big and scary! –
to get some quiet, grown-up time?Let them wear themselves out;
hope they run out of steam
before too many things get broken?Put them in time-out
until they calm down or
take a nap?One thing’s for sure: we adults have to start
cleaning up this mess now so there is
less to do later.melissa suarez

October 26, 2025
A short storyI'm not, but I look taller. And I'm not blonde
anymore because I never
actually
was.When I see her in pictures
I do not recognize her even though
I know her so deeply. I know her
in patterns and seasons
and context that she does not yet.
I love her for every reason I know of.I do not miss her.
I see her face, the one she could never look at
except with laser-focused vision, at every flaw.
I see her face in full now, for the first time.
And I am prettier now. But she so wanted to be.
I love her so.Once she loved God and Men of God,
captivated by the light they shone
into the shadowy webs she grew up in,
until finally, with sun's brilliance,
and the gentlest touch,
they proved to be only
dewy drops, and melted away.It was another amount of time
traveling previously woven threads of
time and experience, forward and
back, and around and again,
before she discovered every drop
of beautiful light she'd glimpsed,
delighted in, and sought, came from
reflection.It was her all along.
And that is when she became me.I'm not, but I look taller.melissa suarez

October 24, 2025
I Was Walking With a GhostCarve into asphalt ruts again,
know them better than my own skin.
Immediately I am seventeen on
another midnight drive home;
my headlights make all
the same old shadows.
Pink Bullets in my mind, but
Pine Hill puts the hole in my chest.I hope you still love that remodeled A-frame,
your dream that came all the way true.
My wedding invitation must have
just been lost in those
panoramic sunset views.I've felt a lot of things since
becoming your ghost but when
the darkness is just right as I
carve into these ruts again,
all I remember is how much
I once loved my best friend.melissa suarez

October 22, 2025
My best workProbably about half is missing—
large parts of what makes a person,
torn off, bloodied and ragged,
or atrophied—what would've otherwise
formed, but it was the survival years.Everything is stitched up, the damage
contained in real time. It does not look nice,
but she was a toddler learning to sew
and forgetting how to play (she stitched
that loss up, too), grieving skills she didn't want
in place of the childhood she did
(those seams are jagged, but they hold).Healing is not undoing and redoing
the stitching with grown-up skill in hopes that
she will look better.In fact, that would bleed her right out.These stitches hold because they fucking had to.Healing is gazing at this half-whole form exactly
as she is, this work of art I forged against my will,
discovering my pure devotion to her.Healing is: I am biased, and every single stitch is
the most beautiful thing I've ever seen a child
make.My best work.I've always done my very best.melissa suarez


February 16, 2026: Dedicated to every survivor, with love. And dedicated to everyone who didn't survive, with love.

June 28, 2025
La La LandRemember when we were young and in love?
And now you’re burning down around me,
but you’re still so beautiful.

I want what we always dreamed we’d have—
is it too late for all that?
Are we too old and changed?
Is there too much already done?
Can we start again from here?
I miss you.
I miss the hope of you.
La la la la
Land.melissa suarez

May 26, 2025
Orange TreeAll my life led me.
I asked for beauty and waited
into ages I never imagined inhabiting.
Never thought I would prove her
at such numbers.
I asked for dreams upon dreams
and was given such pain
I twisted and changed
over and over again, woke
with a start from so many things
I didn't know I was dreaming until I wasn't.
This life came to me, through me,
rhyming to me my own beauty and pain.
Everything I asked for came
wrapped in its opposite,
revealed only by some cadence of time.
These are the things I think, sitting
in perfect desert sun.
Just me and this orange tree.melissa suarez

March 6, 2025
BetrayedIt still surprises me,
these traces when I find them,
shallow enough to feel them,
my veins of Fool’s gold
that shouldn't be unmapped,
untapped.Parts of me still holding onto
the parts of you
that hurt me, like if I can
feel it long enough
it'll be worth it,
like my longevity
gives your brutality
meaning.Like it’s anything more than
just: I am still here,
still
betrayed.melissa suarez

February 27, 2025
The Grieving Queensome days, at the end of her day,
the Queen set down her scepter,knelt down on her floor,
face down on her ground,and bowed before the weight
of it all.and let it crush her, crumpled,
tears pulled forth in steady streams—that some have so very much
and some have nothing at all.that more begets more
and less begets less.that in this world Robin Hood
was only a childhood story.that a Queen is all we’ve got,
and: what can i dowhat can i do
what can i domelissa suarez

February 3, 2025
do better.The illiterate blamed
the immigrant, forgetting
his own history.
I spoke to your Ancestors
and they are
Not
Pleased.
They left you so much
to heal and
you
have
not.
Now there are no rules left.
So what will you hide behind?
So what will you do about it?melissa suarez

October 25, 2024
On being owed a miracle.I make a better God than yours.
I'd have stepped in. I'd have stopped it.
I'd kill the bastard who started it.
I wouldn't have just watched, felt bad,
waited for the ends to justify the paths
I created, or I allowed, or I walked
with you (whatever makes you feel better).I make a better God than yours and
Christians will say that's an excuse
for not believing but I say
God is their excuse to believe,
rather than know things that are
excruciating to know,
(whatever makes you feel better)
and all the unbearable unknown.melissa suarez

July 29, 2024
I hope death healed youthat you unfurled, like a flower,
petals as gentle as life was not.
what was knotted, hardened,
twisted up tight–
is undone, falling about,
loose, light, peony rich.
that you, delicate, soft,
feel like home,
after being away awhile.
that you are as bloom, now,
as you were bud, with us.
I hope there's so little left here
because there's so much of you
everywhere, and always.
I hope it's the easiest thing,
the best thing,
you've ever had.melissa suarez

May 13, 2024
guess I'm a jealous god, tooMy forgotten unforgiven, all these years
of misplaced piety and prayers.I admit I understand the appeal–
he is easier to confess to; you
never looked in his eyes and dehumanized
to justify your inhumanity, plus
he's everyone's favorite placeholder, after all
his forgiveness has overnight delivery.I do hope your religion can save you,
it's just that these sins
are against Me, your debts
carry My name, but your prayers
begin with his, and I know
your confessions bring no relief
every time they're not to Me.I did not then, and I will not now, die
for your sins. so you ask him, but
to what end? I hold the clear title that
you seek, and he never cleared it with Me.how much easier to personify, and then deify,
the forgiveness you crave, than to ever dignify
what you once dehumanized. so the irony is that
you need Me to be saved, and I don't need to
forgive to be divine.melissa suarez

May 4, 2024
All thispermanent world being baby new,
the solid earth still shifts beneath our feet.
Mountains we cannot move cover our cities,
centuries; this life flowed forward and we
gaze back to where we once fought
to survive. In our bones we remember
how it felt to struggle, and ultimately to live,
even if just barely. It was
and it is enough.melissa suarez

March 23, 2024
return homereturn home
to breathe the air these lungs grew into
to see how much the trees have grown up
to see how much I have grown up
and how much I never will.melissa suarez

March 1, 2024
EntropyIn the aftermath of heartbreak,
when you're barely walking
through rubble that
stays longer than you'd think,
but watering the wreckage
with every one of your own tears
doesn't put anything where
or how or the way it was,
not even a little bit, in fact,
every day it looks less
like you remember,
or do the memories look less
like what it was? Yes
and it's strange the things
you want to get rid of immediately,
and the things you will not, ever.
I washed the bedspread right away
so it would smell brand new,
but the torn curtains I keep,
all the hundreds of tiny holes.melissa suarez

January 19, 2024
House of HoneyIn my deepest dreams I find my way back
to the old house, before it was destroyed
and restored, when at night it was
surrounded by dark woods and the
sounds of night creatures and pond frogs,
and a train in the distance; I slept there
then and I do again. And again. It's sticky
and too much, too deep. A house of
honey for me to fly in, drown in.melissa suarez

January 16, 2024
some thingsThere is just nothing beautiful
in winter that I can see, or feel,
or write into a warm meaning.
I don't know how.And there is nothing beautiful
in the things you did, and said,
and I could write about it,
paint blood into art—
I do know how.
But how dare I
make meaning from dirt left
smeared across pure life.Better to leave it that way,
in the way, and ugly. There
are some things only artists
won't say.melissa suarez

January 5, 2024
Crying Over MilkGrief doesn't kill us.
(though of course it should)It hurts just enough to shatter a human heart,
but not enough to stop its beating, while
the things that actually kill a person wouldn't be
worth mentioning,
otherwise.How stupidly like milk we are,
to just expire when some date arrives.melissa suarez

January 4, 2024
Leaves settle for decaywe hang lights and drink
to feel okay, still
this weather makes me cold
to you. you just settle for
so little light, as if it's your fault
the days are too short
to stretch out in,
to be happy in, as if the
sentence fits the crime;
as if we lived the dream,
it wouldn't count as living—
that is spring
this is the winter due us
for the audacity of wanting.
don't you know we live on a spinning rock?
yes but don't you know we are made of stars?melissa suarez

December 28, 2023
Bedtime StoriesSome kids grow up
with the monster
under the bed;mine was
    mostly in his office,
    or watching TV,
    or, with any luck,
         still at work for the day.He may have been
    Frankenstein’s,
but I was his.And I am his
    peculiar, lingering pain,
    strained relationship with
         being alive at all,
    desperate foreign familiarity.And I am to story’s end,
    the child of the childhood monster.melissa suarez

December 17, 2023
NightHow dare we all?
Go into that night, at all.
We who create all the meaning
there ever was, and is, and is to come.We who carry life heavy,
because it is,
and see everything by light,
because we are
(made of stars).We who compose cities of stars,
but don't know, or don't remember,
if we've been here before this,
if we know more than this,
if we ever did, or ever will,
if that night contains us, or
if it's just a vacuum made from
the sheer power of the lives we
lead, then leave.melissa suarez

November 28, 2023
winter (again)In spite of
every single thing,
Leaves are down
for the count.Another sunset outlines
each skeletal silhouette—
the light fades to match
the bodies.And all my world is in
its own shadow
again.We're clear and static
and cold and quick
to bite, and still—Time flows along
under sheets of ice.melissa suarez

August 21, 2023
It's Hard to See Himtwo sad, brown eyes
dark and deep and rimmed
with memories I do not contain.it's always you I see in them,
so I never looked
for long,
never asked for them
anyway,
never chose them
for myself,
until today—I never have to love you, but I
have got to learn to love the you
in me.melissa suarez

July 27, 2023
It's Hard to See Hersmall is
the one crafted in unlove
pockets filled with emptyto contain the fewest needs
to earn the air and space
that you breathe and taketo earn some right to life
to offset the creators' regret
but your debt only ever grows sopockets filled with empty
the one crafted in unlove
is smallmelissa suarez

June 18, 2023
June
melissa suarezI've only ever sat on roofs with boys I
never kissed,
never dated,
never said the things we might've felt in the air
up there,
just nice kids sitting on roofs,
looking at night skies,
growing up together.I think we talked about music,
maybe you had a drink,
when I look right at the memory,
it's less there than when I feel it;
it's not really here anymore.Like you.I wonder if your cancer cells were already there
under the night sky with us.How strange to
cease to exist,It's always unfinished when it ends,


February 22, 2023
HerAt night, at times,
the moon catches my breath.
Pointing, confident and precise,
toward a star that even now
churns energy well beyond me,
burrowed as I am
in the shadow of my entire world,
with a moon-shaped compass
so I never lose my way to
the next day, so I can know that
she's just on the other side
of everything I can see
until I can see everything
in her again.melissa suarez

December 15, 2022
It's a Tragedy.The spoiler, collectively rejected.
replaced our ticking clocks with
bright silent screens sans
second hands; minutes relegated
to the small print, in the corner
so we're always scrolling awayas though it's not a countdown
as though it's not The countdown
as though ignoring makes it less
as though enough love can save us
as though believing makes it so
as though so much wanting does, too
as though all we know isn't just
that living ends in dying
every time.melissa suarez

November 20, 2022
Anecdotes of Relativitywhen we orbited each other
close and whirling in
space and time
we lived a forever for
every breath I take today
as I imagine my body
creating an internal void so
immense pressure outside
of this organism
pushes air into me
until I push it out again in
this pursuit of homeostasis
that we call life
but to finally achieve equilibrium
we call deatha shiver as winter winds attend autumn,
the familiarity of chords in a new song,
and I wonder if each breath I take today,
and every forever we felt then,
are the same pull and push of energy,
the same forces of our matter, just
viewed from different vantage points:
We are always yours, mine, then, now, and
never.melissa suarez

November 20, 2022
GhostedI feel it all–
from solid to shaking to memory:
desired but uninvited to
the dreams I walk tonight.
Thoughts about me
surround me;
remembering feelings never
given to me,
finding me anyway–
swirling in almosts,
jumbled in transmission
across miles,
years,
lies that did not hide your fears–
not even a little;
you know
I know.
I feel it all.melissa suarez

September 17, 2022
summertimeWhite hot sunbright falls so heavy,
I melt into my own gravity
as liquid; I am the same energy I was
as a child and as a star
and everything along the way.There is so much of me.
When I melt I meet more of her,
sit quietly because she does not know me:
my clear memories of hazy summer days,
her ore and heat and light, how we
will always puddle together under
the weight of our sun.melissa suarez

August 18, 2022
The stars, a light.The darkest place I've ever been was
the center of your love for me. Eventually
my eyes adjusted so I could see such
white washed walls, tall windows
pointing to a steeple pointing to a god
who gripped you with a fear you
gripped me with, too. I thought I knew
more than I did, but now I do.
The outside has a better view.
I love the stars at night.melissa suarez

April 18, 2022
Morning Rainwas misting over spring green
when we compared notes—
both lost our souls at 33,
this deity and me.they say
the first third is
always the hardest.
thereafter,
the sun usually comes out
in time for a beautiful set.melissa suarez

January 7, 2022
Things You OutgrewThere is no list of things I outgrew.But a detailed list of suspects
exists:
Hard Questions
with absolutely no defense
against all my simple, certain answers.
It's my fault;
I did it and then I blamed them.
And then I framed and reframed them
to fit
next to the box of too-small clothes
under the pile of too-small answers.
It was years in the making,
this record now pending a long
investigation;
and so far,
my evidence is insufficient,
inconclusive, and inconsistent.
The hardest case I'll ever argue
is my own.melissa suarez

January 6, 2022
A Night Desertorange on red on sand.
day-end, a cool breeze arrives,
urges the sun to bed,
tucks her in under heavy, dark hills.
shadow boulders shoulder rocks surrounded
by vast ripples of the finely crushed: a lineage.
heat waves sigh and roll over
and take the night to dissipate.
cactus blooms nod.
starts, thousands,a night desert is infinite, falling
just shy of space to heal.melissa suarez

January 5, 2022
the prayer
melissa suarezOur God,
(the one in heaven)my name is sacred, too.
kingdoms come and kingdoms go;
the Wills are always getting contested,
so our bread goes to the birds
who legally cannot trespass
at all,
anywhere.anyway,I forget the rest but I remember hearing
you slept when your friends were afraid
and then they slept when you were,
so if nothing else, at least
I hope you say my name
in your sleep.amen.

January 4, 2022
closure is a mythunless, of course,
you believe in it;
by all means,
believe.may it be your reality.
like many a myth,
as real as someone
believed it to be.myths are lovely,
comforting and kind and gentle
to irreparable things.melissa suarez

January 3, 2022
OklahomaThe wind comes sweeping down the plain
and certain days continues east, settling into
a breeze up among mountains and
I breathe it into my lungs, and it catches on
my rage.When I remember
your secrets
you calling God as your expert
witness against me.The King,
and His Men,
and You, against
me and your truth.Each,
a perfectly ruined thing.melissa suarez

December 30, 2021
some things shatter, some things bloommatter is just a word for
everything.
do you remember
the way it mattered?
the moments planted
without markers
or a tombstone
or silk flowers that could fray with time
to mark the everything we found
there, the way we didn't mind that
some things shatter, some things bloom.melissa suarez