“The Moon Doesn’t Judge Me”
An Original Poem by: Axton N.O. Mitchell
The moon doesn’t judge
the darkness I bring.
I can lay out everything
my tangled weeds
my gnarled bits
the strange mechanics
that make me tick.
Even when unseen
I feel her energy linger.
In the hush of a new moon
she shows me
how we’re in tune.
The moon doesn’t judge
the weight of my shadow.
She feels it all
through every phase
and still she stays.
Learning her rhythm
is learning myself.
Each cycle
an act of self-love.
The fire still smells like cedar and clove. With bay leaves and memory. Like endings.
At midnight, I threw myself to the flames. No, not all of me, just the parts I no longer want to keep. I wrote the things I’m letting go of on torn paper and fed them to the fire like offerings. I carved hope into bay leaves and whispered every dream I’m not ready to give up on. I mixed herbs and bark for Litha. Both for letting go and for inviting in. And then I burned it all.
It wasn’t neat.
It never is.
But it was honest.
I burned what I’ve outgrown, again even if I already wrote about it two days ago.
I burned shame I inherited.
I burned the way I still try to shrink when I take up too much space.
I burned the ghost of who I thought I had to be to earn love.
I let the smoke wrap around me like a truth spell or a reminder. I’m not starting over. I’m continuing. And I needed that fire to mark the shift. This isn’t a ritual I’ll explain in exact terms. It’s just something I needed.
A fire.
A night.
A line drawn in smoke. Now there’s ash in my hair. Smoke in my bones. And more space than there was before.
I’ll plant something in it. Not now. But soon.
I’ve outgrown my adult best friend. The boy I became a man with. The boy who made it feel like I wasn’t alone in a place where nobody felt like me. For years he was the only mirror I had. The only person who got it. Honestly, I’ve been outgrowing him slowly, painfully, one splinter at a time. I didn’t know how to let go. Not until the rope cut so deep I practically sliced my fingers off just trying to hold on. Now there’s no grip left. Just skin and scar. space and peace. I don’t hate him. Which is usually how I let go when my love turns to hate. I just no longer wish to participate in his delusions or fantasies.
I’ve also outgrown habitual drug use. Or really, drugs in general. At least the illicit kind. I still like my plants: weed, nicotine, caffeine. Those feel more natural to me. Oh, and mushrooms. Can’t forget the little mushroom dudes. Sometimes they’ve taught me more than any therapist ever did. But the rest of it? That chasing? That hole-filling impulse? That’s gone.
I’ve outgrown toxic patterns. The ones I clung to because they felt like home, mostly outgrown. I mean chaos was the language I was taught love in. I grew up watching relationships rot from the inside out and thought that must be what connection looks like. So I repeated it. Over and over. Until I didn’t. I still have my self-sabotaging hiccups but no one is perfect.
I’ve outgrown my clothes. Literally. I dropped over 60 pounds this year. I had told myself I’d do it as my resolution. For once, I didn’t break that promise. My body feels different now. My skin holds me differently. My knees don’t hurt on hikes as quick for sure.
And maybe the biggest thing? I’ve outgrown the lie that my depression controls everything. Some days, yeah, it wins. But other days, a lot of days, it’s a choice. Not to be sick, but to sit in it. To fester in the filth instead of fighting. I’ve started calling myself out on it. Started crawling out of bed even when I don’t want to. Started facing the rot before it spreads. Because healing is choosing again and again not to let the dark devour you whole. If there’s no light in my line of sight I have learned to become the light.
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I’ve burned a lot to survive. Versions of me that loved too loud. Versions that begged to be chosen.
Grief I thought I’d buried, only to set it alight again when the season called for it.
Litha makes it easy to focus on what we’re releasing, but what about what we refuse to give up?
This is a list of what the fire hasn’t taken. My ability to write through pain without erasing it. My voice, even when it shook, even when it wanted to vanish.
My hunger for truth. My softness, even when it was mocked or manipulated. My magic, especially the kind that hides in daily rituals, not sabbat circles. My will to live, even when I hated the world for making me prove it.
Some parts of me have already been through the fire and walked out different scarred, sure, but still whole.
There’s a kind of strength in knowing what can’t be stripped from you even by trauma, even by grief, even by your own self-destruction cycles.
So as I cast into the fire what no longer fits.
I hold close what has always been mine.
I kiss the parts that endured.
I water the roots that stayed intact.
Let this sun shine on what I’ve kept.
What I’ve rebuilt.
What I will never again set on fire.
What parts of myself feel the most alive under the heat of summer
It’s the version of me that comes out dripping in sweat. There is dirt under my nails. I hold a rock in my hand. It’s the me who forgets what time it is. I’ve been outside too long. I trace trails with my feet and stories with my eyes. Summer makes me reckless in a soft way. Not chaotic. Not destructive. Just free. The sun makes my skin hum. I feel more real when it’s hot enough to blur the edges of things.
I come alive near water. In it. Around it. Listening to the hush and crash of it. Watching the way it sparkles and swallows light and tosses it back up. There’s a version of me that only shows up in July. A version that lets things slide more easily. That laughs more. That eats with bare hands. That lets sweat gather at the back of my neck and doesn’t try to hide it.
I complain about the bugs and the heat but I think I like that too. The way nature demands I participate. I like having to move slower. To swat something away. To know I’m not the only thing alive out here.
The dirt feels like home. The sun feels like a crown. Even when I’m tired. Even when I’m burned out. I am most myself under this fire. My body remembers how to trust itself. My breath gets bigger.
I don’t just exist in summer. I live in it. I stretch. I bloom. I let the world see me without apology.
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
Mine would have to be one of these:
You can take the nature out the boy, but you can’t take the man out of nature
Even when I’m knee-deep in ink and altar smoke, my roots are still hiking trails, crinoid fossils, and the hum of wind through stone.
Poetry is resistance when you write like Poeaxtry
Every line is protest, prayer, and proof that I’m still here trans, loud, witchy, and unerasable.
My gender is wilderness: untamed, honest, and thriving in the dark
I wasn’t made to be trimmed down into a label. I’m a forest fire and a bloom, both.
Spell bags in one hand, survival in the other
I’m a living altar: grief and grit, ritual and rage, healing and hustle.
Former silence, current storm
I used to swallow it all. Now I speak, write, scream, and conjure without shame.
Born from shadow work, built to shine
The ghosts that haunt me taught me how to live.
Soft things with teeth
Gentleness doesn’t mean weakness. I know how to bite back if I have to.
Can write you a love poem, hex your ex, and hike a mountain before lunch
I’m not a contradiction, I’m a constellation.
But honestly, I can’t be wrapped up in just one line. I’m too many things. Too full of lives survived, of magic made, of poems burned and rewritten.
So if I had to choose?
Unapologetic trans man. Poet witch. Rock hunter. Truth-teller. Born to be wild… not just free. And always me!
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Here is the original post
Craft is one of those rare words that refuses to be boxed in.
As a noun, it speaks to the artistry of our hands, the steady, patient making of something real. Pottery. Woodwork. Poems stitched from lived experience. It’s tactile. Rooted. Intentional.
As a verb, it’s the act of shaping.
To craft is to labor with love, to chisel something from nothing a story, a home, a spell. It’s not just about hands; it’s about heart, history, and sometimes hardship.
Then there’s a craft the kind that takes to water or air, built to carry us far from where we began. A vessel. A leap of faith. Something that sails or soars, as we do when we dare to create.
But my favorite use?
The Craft.
Witchcraft.
Ancestral. Personal. A reclamation of power in a world that too often tries to take it.
It’s not all candles and crystals. Sometimes, it’s shadow work, hex-breaking, protection,
or grief alchemy. It’s the silence of a ritual done
in secret, or the roar of community rising in a circle.
And here’s the thing…
We should all try to be as versatile, as flexible, as unapologetically multifaceted as the word craft itself.
To be a maker and a mover.
To hold stillness and momentum.
To be the spell, the hands that cast it, and the vessel it travels in.
So, tell me what’s your craft?
What do you build, shape, summon, or release?
Whether you work with herbs or heartache, paint or protest, your craft is sacred.
Share it. Speak it. Own it.
Seriously feel free to share whatever you’d like 👍
Much love always,
Axton N.O. Mitchell
Poeaxtry_
