the Infinite

on Chosen Family/on Grief/on Hope/on Love/Poems/the Work

with an everlasting love {poem}

Posted on 2 May 2025

my moments with you
seem so few and far between,
crystallized by memory
into precious stones to keep and hold,
and I will never forget them.
I could never forget you.

when this lifetime’s memory fades
there will still be a hearthfire in me,
warm and eternal —
it doesn’t matter if I remember why.
we built it together
and it will burn in me forever.
whatever eldest ancestor can give me,
let it be this.

you are and always have been
a light in my darkness.
if the journey was long,
if our hearts were breaking,
if love was all that’s left,
it is enough for me.
if you were ever my burden,
it’s because I wanted to carry you.

whatever promises I could have made,
I made them to you,
or beside you,
or with you nearby.

shadows will never be as lonely.
hope will always be closer.
grief will always remind me of love.
joy will sometimes look like you —
fire to my fire,
wisdom in my wondering,
guidance in my wandering,
laughter in my laughter,
strength in my bravery,
compassion in my pain,
peace in my quiet,
memory in my myth.

you changed my forever
into something more beautiful.
something more complete.
an existence more made of promises fulfilled.
a cosmos no longer cold.
uncertainty no longer terrifying.
fear no longer paralyzing.
assurance of rest to come.

I have made a handful of true choices
that changed me fundamentally,
no looking back and no regrets.
may I never speak untruth.
choosing you was never wrong.
whether or no,
you’re stuck with me forever.
this is the gift you gave me:
I am never alone.
this is the gift we created out of who we are:
together we are never alone.

I won’t tell you who this was written for, although it’s possible you might guess. The one I wrote it for knows and that makes the upwelling of my need to speak and the tears that fell on my lap more than worth it. Sometimes there is pain layered into love but that does not make it any less true.

xox, beloved —
Nix

epilogue:

I long to feel my heart burned open wide
‘Til nothing else remains
Except the fires from which I came
Like parted souls, divided for an age
Awe and wonder, I’d embrace
And the world anew again

But now, this picture from me fades
From still’s cold hand, there’s no reprieve
Light the fire in me

Shine, shine your light on me
Illuminate me, make me complete
Lay me down and wash this world from me
Open the skies and burn it all away
‘Cause I’ve been waiting
All my life, just waiting
For you to shine, shine your light on me

I dreamed the world with my eyes open
But time moved on and then
New worlds begin again
Oh my heart, in this universe so vast
No moment was made to last
So light the fire in me

Shine, shine your light on me
Illuminate me, make me complete
Please shine, shine your light on me
No hesitation, make me complete
Lay me down and wash this world from me
Open the skies and burn it all away
‘Cause I’ve been waiting
All my life, just waiting
For you to shine, shine your light on me

— selection of lyrics from Nova, by VNV Nation

featured photo by Aldebaran S on Unsplash

on Chosen Family/on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Grief/on Hope/on Mental Health

because our choices led us here

Posted on 16 April 2025

There is no comfortable way to exist in a world where fascism has risen again and is viciously eating as many people as possible as quickly as possible. There is no way to stop seeing it without fully disconnecting from the rest of the world. And I doubt that anyone who’s here reading this has done that, or even truly wants to. I want a break from suffering, but not at the expense of compassion and anger on behalf of everyone caught in the beast’s jaws.

if we knew then what we know now, would we have made different choices?

I think it’s easy to assume that if we had more information, more knowledge, more wisdom, that when the choices were made that led us to this place, we would have done something different. But the different thing is probably the harder thing, and even though we all know that sometimes the better thing is the harder one, we don’t naturally choose the hard way.

All the choices that led us here would probably be made the same way again.

And even if that isn’t true, we can’t go back and do it differently. Maybe, hopefully, there is another timeline where this is not what happened. In another timeline, you and I and the people we love are safe. In another timeline, trans people were not continuously erased with violence. In another timeline, nobody was deported. In another timeline, perhaps there was more kindness.

I am afraid.

I have an idea of how all of this might play out, but seeing it happening might break me. I don’t know if I am strong enough to survive simply witnessing all of this. I don’t know if I am strong enough to stay alive and stay here and take care of my family and love everyone who has passed and everyone who is still here. I want to be, but wanting something to be true doesn’t mean that it’s true.

we are together but separate.

I am in our Thailand house. I can hear the cats downstairs, I can feel the heat radiating through the walls of the building, I can smell the shampoo from someone’s shower. I washed my laundry and dried it earlier and put it away just a little while ago. I had some lunch. I drank some coffee. I added things to the household shopping list.

And I read the comments on the thread I posted yesterday afternoon (which is the middle of the night in the part of the US that I’m from), and I am achingly aware of all the things I cannot do.

hey y’all — if you’re trans and you haven’t updated any of your documentation but you plan on doing that, DON’T

it’s too late for that. you probably won’t be able to keep your identity documents if you submit them for any reason. a deadname is awful but it’s literally not worse than a concentration camp.

(posted on Threads on April 15)

I can’t help anyone with the very real very terrifying fact that some trans people have already been denied identity documentation, that some of them have had their documentation confiscated, that some of them are stuck in a limbo between having some documents changed but not all of them. I can’t help anyone who is now unable to leave the US legally if they want to. I can’t help anyone who might be deported or harmed or killed or disappeared. I can’t do ANYTHING but speak words into the chaos of everyone screaming in anger and fear, just in case it helps one person. Just one person. Please let me help just one person more.

Most of the rest of my family is safely in Australia, where the fascism can’t directly hurt them. But I’m not with them because I’m here with other family. I can’t smell their shampoo or wet hair right out of the shower. I can’t hear our five year old giggling. I can’t feel the hot wind or see the red dirt of a land I only recently met. I can’t cry on the shoulders of my partners or hold them when they need to do the same. I feel the distance and the uncertainty because nothing is ever completely immune from a sudden change.

I miss them and right now in this moment I am afraid, although I know that feeling ebbs and flows just like grief and just like any other kind of pain. Sometimes it feels like too much to bear, and sometimes I can be the person who speaks words of love and hope to my beloveds.

I don’t know what to say, really, except that this is so incredibly hard and none of us know how to get through it, not really.

All we have is who we are and what we give. Right? Even in a crumbling empire those words are true.

Who I am is an amalgamation of all the choices I’ve made and before that, the choices my parents and other adults in my life made, and even before that there were choices made by the people who wrote and published the christofascist curriculum that I was eventually taught while I was homeschooled, and the awful thing about that is I had no idea that’s what it was until decades later. As a kid I was unimpressed with it and took nothing from it except that it didn’t make sense to me, but that was as far as my thoughts about it went. I had no idea it would lead to a place like this.

What I give, I want to believe, is sometimes hope, sometimes truthfulness, sometimes really good jokes, sometimes meaningful insight, sometimes wisdom. And I also bring with me my trauma and my trust issues and my need for love and my fear of not being enough, and the behaviors that stem from those things.

If you were hoping I knew how to end this post I’m very sorry to be disappointing to everyone including myself. I don’t know how. I don’t think there is a way to end a conversation about these things, because the things don’t stop happening so that there can be a break for a while.

All I can do is cry and dry my tears and drink some water and remember to eat some food and do the little things that keep the cats and other people here safe and healthy, including myself. All I can do right now is try to make sure I said what I meant to say here, and then stop gnawing on my own soul and just publish it and hope, once again, please let me help just one person more.

Please try to take comfort in whatever non-harmful thing can bring it to you today. Please try not to carry the weight of this brokenness on your own back. Please take one deep breath. Please stay.

xox,
Nix

epilogue:

weep not for roads untraveled
weep not for paths left alone
’cause beyond every bend is a long blinding end
it’s the worst kind of pain I’ve known

weep not for roads untraveled
weep not for sights unseen
may your love never end, and if you need a friend
there’s a seat here, alongside me

— opening verse from Talking to Myself — One More Light Live by Linkin Park

featured images is a photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

on Chosen Family/on Deathwork & Griefwork/on Grief/on Love

dissolving into Light: even the least of these

Posted on 8 April 2025

cw: pet death

On Sunday afternoon, our beloved Callie crossed the rainbow bridge.

We knew it was her time. We were not surprised, but the softness with which we held her for the past several weeks was the gift we could give her. My two adult kids who are here sat deathwatch with her, sitting and laying on the floor near her, so that she would not be alone. I was out of the house but I had put one of my lightweight shirts over her as a blanket because she was getting colder as the time waned, and I wanted her to be able to have me with her in some way.

A few times over the past couple of weeks we thought she was slipping away for the final time, but she would rally again and every morning when we woke up it was a gift to see her still there, still breathing, still asking for careful pets and for the vitamin-enriched treats we got especially for her. We loved her so much. We tried to love her extra for the family members that couldn’t be here with her physically. We cried and talked to her softly and each of us told her, more than once, that it was okay whenever she needed to go, that we would miss her but we would be okay. We told her she could go see her sister and mom again.

I left the room a lot to go sob over the sink from time to time, because I didn’t want to be the adult that was crumbing, but I didn’t hide my tears from anyone. Allowing sadness to briefly drag us underwater is necessary, because without that experience we can’t have the sensation of the life-water of grief lifting us back up so that we can breathe again.

I trained as a death doula and I have found a deep meaning in giving a good death to anyone who is actively dying. For Callie, we talked about it and we believed that meant giving her comfortable space to rest, access to clean water and food and the litter box, treats to help her with nutrition, careful fusses when she wanted them, and not to be left alone. We gave her a good death. We did our best.

This week we will be able to have her cremated and, hopefully, we will have a footprint card and an urn to keep with us. She will always be part of who we are.

One of her favorite places to sit was the counter-top, which normally nobody is allowed to do, but it was easier for her to manage a lot of things from that vantage point. I would sometimes crouch down below her so that I could look up at her face and talk to her, and in one of the moments I had with her like that, I had the energetic and visual sense that she was slowly dissolving into the brightness of the Light. It was a brief but wholly sacred moment and I will cherish the mystery of that moment.

On Sundays every week, those of us at the Thailand house participate in the regular village practice of giving an offering of red Fanta at the village shrine, which is just down the end of our street. My eldest wanted to give the offering on that day, and wanted me to go with, so we walked down in the heat and humidity of the early dark to the illuminated, ornate shrine. I stood nearby so that Vincent could be fully immersed in paying our respect to the spirits and gods of the land here, and as soon as it walked up to place the open can on the shrine base, a medium-sized white short-haired cat suddenly stood up and almost hurried away. We both slowed down our movements and the cat stayed, and I asked permission to take a photo of the cat that was not strictly speaking A Cat.

The Mysteries can’t be explained, only experienced in order to be known. I think I’m learning that even experiencing a Mystery does not mean it can be fully comprehended. The only thing we have is what we noticed, what was revealed, and how much we can remember and map into our own hearts so that we can keep it with us.

Even the smallest of our cats, the youngest, the one who was a stray, the one whose eyesight was poor because she was sick early in her life, the one that lost her mother and litter mate and other family members — she was precious and her life had meaning beyond what I can comprehend.

I am grateful for the way she showed up with us. For her utter naivety, her enthusiasm, her happy purrs, the way she drooled when the fusses were Just Right. For how much she fought to stay for just a while longer. For the love she accepted from us.

I am deep in my feelings this afternoon and even though I have errands to run still today, I will hold this feeling warmly in my heart because it is part of the mystery for me. I cherish the grief because it tells me that I loved intensely and wholeheartedly enough to feel the loss of who I loved.

xox,
Nix

epilogue:

flowers in my hair makes me wish that you were here
when my mind goes away, oh, I hope that you’ll be near me

flowers in my hair makes me wish that you were here
when my eyes go away, why my time goes

maybe one day
I’ll end up in a place
where I’m not afraid
and the sun never sleeps

no sad goodbyes,
and no fights,
and no crying
we’ll sleep in the arms
of an orange breeze

and I hope to see you
just out of my side view
and just maybe then we can be,
my pretty

flowers in my hair makes me wish that you were here
when my mind goes away, oh, I hope that you’ll be near me

flowers in my hair makes me wish that you were here
when my eyes go away, when my time goes

— lyrics from Flowers in My Hair by Wes Reeve

featured image is a photo by Maxime VALCARCE on Unsplash