Lydia Rae Bush

Lydia Rae Bush is a poet exploring themes of embodiment and social-emotional development. Rae’s work is Best of the Net nominated and can be found in publications such as Vocivia Magazine and Sage Cigarettes Magazine. Lydia’s chapbook Free Bleeding is forthcoming with dogleech books.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Flame Wheel

Grief drops, panic rises,
and I've got my deflection grin on.
How many topics would you
like these words to center?

Can I choose one whole amalgam—
call it freaking out? Or, not even trying
to find my center? Only remembering that
I have one! When I write my circus down.

Vigilant

The souls I wouldn't try to fix,
the compliments I didn't give,
and all the hearts who never asked
for mine to be so earnest—

I'm a bit specific and verbose,
but curious instead of presumptuous.
Studious, but as noninvasive
as the world which is

pervading all the space I don't
take up when I clutch
everybody's energy and slam—
I mean, I write it down.

unfearful

content warning: suicidal ideation

3.
i am brave because i figured out a way
to survive,

20.
and i am brave for seeking something
i had never known,
called safety.

29.
i am brave for deciding to risk
stopping surviving
in the name of thriving,

12.
when i know better than anyone
how easy it is to die.

31.
so don't tell me
that i am not brave for waiting this long
to feel safe,

30.
when i have been moving, and moving, and moving,
while waiting,
when i didn't have to stay at all.