Literary Vegan

Before bombs, the butterflies rose hundreds, like dust motes. Before the saints, wings of iris, teal, tiger  made the stains in the born light — arched by the arms of the trees, insect veins the soldering marks of glass.  Before we could break things, windows flew. LJ Ireton, 2026.

The blossom is here, defrosting minds in puffs but the sky, its breath, can't decide how it wants us to feel. Or else the tease  is the season — equidistant from chilled solitary unchange, snow-bandaged thoughts  and fever-still grass, hearing messages of the future  on forked feet. LJ Ireton, 2026

There is nothing new under the sun. Even death has been done before, in vinegar thorns and mourning for the confused. All that we don't know, He knew — stepping through Hades barefoot to become shepherd of the unshadow. What you think can't be held, He holds — loneliness turned to stone  when He joined hands  of the impossible. LJ Ireton 

Gossamer slips between my fingers, hovers over a mirroring grey-white froth on the sea.  I think of the sleeping stones; unsettling, unsettling their secrets. I let mine fly — the sunrise eats the veil of them and day feels so desperately  different  and the flowers untinted. Inspired by 'The Knight and the Moth' C. LJ Ireton 2026

eye to the lense  landscape fades irrelevant  at your obsidian eyes to mine, a dusk-white, glass wild moment; like you waited, stone serious for me to carry that heavy look away.  C. LJ Ireton, 2026

like a liminal Cinderella, between two masks; keeping one hand on the shoe  in my pocket and one on a flask of tea — those who don't watch the clock  could read me in seconds.  C. LJ Ireton, 2026