I’m good at telling the truth, even when it’s raw. At writing poems that bite and bleed and bloom, that don’t apologize for what they carry. I’m good at seeing what others miss. Including in people, in patterns, in the quiet. I read cards like maps, pendulums like conversations, and I don’t flinch when the message is sharp. Following the message hidden with-in as if I knew the way all along.
Stone Crafts & Witch craft Items
I’m good at making things with my hands and with my heart. I can dig through dirt and stone to find what the earth tried to keep hidden. I then tumble it, or polish it, turn it into something you want to keep close. I make sprays, spell jars, wreaths, wands, offerings that work. That carry weight. That don’t just look pretty they include intentions clearly set by me.(I didn’t list every thing I make.)
Being a Friend
I’m good at being the friend who stays. The brother who knows when to check you and when to hold you. The brother who does anything to make you laugh. I’m good at hearing what isn’t being said. At being the kind of advocate that doesn’t water anything down. I fight smart, and I fight loud when I need to. I’m a Robin Hood for the ones who’ve been ignored too long. I know how to take up space without stealing it from others.
Cultivating Positivity out of the Negative
I’m good at turning grief into action. At noticing magic in the mess. At building community from the ground up, not just to exist, but to matter.
Survival & Forgiveness
I’m good at surviving and then choosing to come back with open hands anyway. I’m good at treating people better than they treat me, giving people too much energy, and trusting too fast also. Honesty it’s all a part of what makes me… me, so I’d keep it all the same.
So, tell me what are you good at that no one claps for, that no one sees until it’s gone? What about the thing you shine at even when no one’s watching, just because it’s yours? What did you never have to try to do you just knew like it was always with you ?
I am a fan of the melancholy, the morbid, and the macabre.
A glutton for the gore and the grotesque. A shameless slut for a slasher or two.. I’m hoping this is also you.
See I find it easier to write about what I know and I like. If I hit a bump or two and I cannot seem to write a thing, I like. I just look into the dark for a spark.
If you make friends when the sunshine dies where the sidewalk ends… Where creepers find a home to crawl, You are in for a treat. Take your seat.
This is my homage to the strange, the odd one out, the girl who forgot her shout, and the boy who had her back but never his own. You are no longer under attack.
“Past This” An original poem by: Axton N.O. Mitchell
Been working on myself and center Like gravity it is a tragedy, pulling you towards me… Away again and back alas.
Please just let this pass!
I won’t unlock the door, won’t pick you up off the floor… Settle the score Return to the masses, I must get past this. Continuing this route only ends my life,
A follower might have waited. Waited for safety, for acceptance, for someone else to go first. But thirteen years ago, I didn’t wait to socially transition. This decision allowed me to medically transition three years later.
I have never been one to fall in line. I have always felt the itch of resistance when told to fit it, shrink, or to wait my turn. A follower would have stayed quiet, but that has never been my nature. I carved a path where there was not one, trading comfort for authenticity, silence for visibility. I have always moved to the rhythm of my own convictions. Enjoying venturing off the beaten path often alone. However, I was never lost.
Fearlessness is Fake News
Being a leader does not mean being fearless; it means moving forward even when fear sits in your throat. I said a decade ago I started my medical transition. Back then, the world wasn’t quite yet filled with hashtags and visibility campaigns. There were not many tv characters or social movements to point to. We are talking about the era pre the politicizing of transgender identities. It was just me and my stubborn heart. I knew deeply that I could no longer live my life pretending. I was not a woman. I had no maps or guidebooks. I just had a gut feeling, and a fire that said go! Eventually, I met my people, who would point me to different resources along some of the way, and I the same for them.
Popular Belief
I want to clarify something. Neither I nor anyone I know has ever transitioned because it was popular. Nor because it was accepted. It isn’t popular now, and it was not then either. I transitioned because living life as a woman felt like slow suffocation. Even if the world did not have space for me, I will continue to carve out my own. The world still does not have space for me. I will continue to carve out my own space.
Leadership to me doesn’t always mean crowds and commands. Sometimes it looks like the quiet rebellion or choosing truth over comfort. Sometimes it’s being the first to stand up to say, “This is who I am!” and daring others to see you finally. I walked ahead not because I want or wanted followers, but because I could no longer stand still. Silence was never and will never create safety for people like me. I have often been doubted, but I always move forward. Each time I move forward, I make space for others to follow. It is not because I asked them to. It is because opening the path showed them they were always allowed to.
So, am I a leader or a follower?
I am a leader. I refuse to be anything less than myself. This holds true even when the world still has not caught up yet.
“I still carry the sound of your promises that never made it past your teeth.”
-Axton N.O. Mitchell
Hi Jake.
I know I swore I let go of all this shit. All of you. But I still carry the sound of promises that never made it past your teeth.
Dad the disappearing act that always came with excuses, the birthdays you ghosted like it was a tradition. The ball games, the plays, the sick days, you’d call for them all big or small. I carry the echo of your words: I’ll be there this time. You never were.
I miss you Momma!
I carry the way Mom said my name right before everything stopped. Eight days before I turned 30, my sisters both not even 21. She stopped existing in a world that never deserved her. I still talk to her like she can hear me. They did teach us energy gets replaced it never leaves. Maybe that’s the part I haven’t let go of. I doubt I have let go of much but her physically. Maybe that’s the part I never should let go. I won’t. I can’t let more of her slip away. She falls through the cracks between my fingers as I pretend. I was definitely not crying again. Not that anyone asked.
I’m the Problem, so They must be the Reason.
I carry the weight of being told I make people miserable, like I’m a curse wrapped in skin. The way an ex said I’d ruin everything I touched the opposite of that king Midas, I think. I don’t remember, but as a kid, my mom would read me a book. It was about a king who turned everything to gold.
As well as other Ex’s and other things they said they never meant to say… but still said. Anyway, for a while, I believed them. Because when you hear it often enough, it doesn’t sound like abuse anymore. It sounds like proof.
The Demons they Left behind
And honestly, if I’m being real, it still does when the demon bpd shows his ass. It’s way further apart than it was known to be in history but I’m still clearly sore in many places. I don’t like to talk directly about that shit. It’s hard when the person you talked to the only one is located on your shelf in an urn. What a joke. The weight of all this is sometimes enough to drown me, I fear.
Those People who left When Axton stopped Hiding
The people who said they loved me until I came-out, found me, or loved me. I chose a name that fit, and they couldn’t try to call me it. I started to look like someone they hadn’t imagined. So they didn’t come around and get used to me as I changed. They decided it was better to walk away.
I carry the silence that followed coming out, the way their love had fine print and conditions. That I didn’t see until I bled through it, of fucking course. They loved the version of me I had to bury. But I didn’t die with her, she was always a shield for a boy too weak to exist. You just knew him by a different name and set of pronouns.
I became something more. I was lonelier at first. Fresh out of my shell. I found my tribe, and the more, I grow the louder I am about equality for everyone. That scares them, so, it is theirs to hold.
I’ve got enough of my own weight to carry. And I do. Every damn day. I carry all the things I said I had burned. The truth is I just folded them up, pressed them behind my ribs like a sad collection. I still read those letters sometimes. They still sting. And I can’t do a thing to stop them from opening.
“Every damn day, I carry all the things I said I had burned. I still read those letters sometimes.”
-Axton N.O. Mitchell
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Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”- a Mexican Proverb.
I live by this quote because it speaks to the core of how I’ve survived, how I’ve become. I’ve been buried in silence, shame, grief, and rejection. As a trans man, I’ve felt the weight of people trying to erase me. As a creator and as a human being who has known deep loss and deep injustice, I’ve felt small. But this quote reminds me that the soil they thought would smother me became the ground I rooted into.
Being buried isn’t the end. It’s the start of a transformation they never expected.
Every painful experience, every time I was dismissed, doubted, or devalued became fuel for something greater. I took that darkness and grew from it. I let it teach me. And through that growth, I’ve found strength that’s quiet, steady, and impossible to fake.
This quote is also about defiance. It’s about being told I wouldn’t make anything of myself, and deciding to blossom anyway. It reminds me that even when the world tries to erase people like me, our stories don’t just survive. They thrive. Our existence pushes through concrete. Our art blooms in places no one watered. Our lives are proof that growth is still possible in the harshest conditions.
So when I say I live by this quote, I mean it. I carry it like a seed in my chest, germinating every time I speak, create, or simply exist without apology.
They didn’t lose you, they left you, and that’s a fact of life you will have to learn to sit with multiple times over your years.
I am sure you will cry plenty of tears, for all the time lost and loyalties left crossed. Pick yourself up and dust your knees back off. There will always be more people to see.
