Words have coursed through my veins ever since I was five and found my mother’s Apple II. With the first clacking of the keys, I realized I could shape the world with a word.

I try to illuminate the darkest corners of the world: the uneasy monsters that hide under our beds. I want to be a voice that shouts, “ I see what you see. I feel what you feel. You are not alone.”

I am an essayist, playwright, visual artist and poet who lives and works in Central Illinois.

Please follow my artistic journey.

no light to come

Rachael Stanford

I waited with razor blade eyes for a voice,
any voice, to tell me that can’t
could be undone.

waited, wrist atrophied
body pruning to death
amongst scented bubbles

to know
we is not are

not the doodles of remembrance
in our youthful futures.

unequivocal proof that is
isn’t only a perfect mess
potentially erased

is only is [sic]

but knowing that with wanting
what the answer could only be,
that even, if only, for the blink of an eye

even, if only, in the last lucent moments
before the drunkard stumbles
into their perpetual state of dis-existence
that we could never still be, but in—

if only

finding that never
sometimes is our only constant

the separation between you and I
exist besides grammatical purposes

(if only)

in a fractured corner of the Jungian mind
separated and immersed in
slipping words
chests of watery graves

(if only)

the pressure pushes
upon my breast

The neon lights
my heaven

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