Grace Briarwood
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gracebriarwood.bsky.social
Grace Briarwood
@gracebriarwood.bsky.social
160 followers 320 following 58 posts
I write poetry and fiction (mysteries, thrillers, and fantasy) and I'm in love with the magic words can create.

You'll also find me sharing my friends' creative adventures, as well as some activism and news.

She/her
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gracebriarwood.bsky.social
#poem #poetry #poet
Text of a poem I lost my baby teeth early, and my canines grew in as fangs. They were too much for a human. Too big and too sharp. I was too big and too sharp before the fangs, but they provided proof that I was made wrong. A monster hid within me and waited for the taste of blood. I didn't want it. Little by little, I made a human of myself. I ground down my fangs.
August 1, 2025 at 5:12 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
A little fantasy flash fiction poem I wrote a couple of years ago. #poetry #flashfiction
Text of a poem: You serve me venison stew and apple pie. These remnants of autumn, scarlet when you took the life from them, will strengthen me for my odyssey. You want me well-fortified to fulfill my pact and cause the havoc you are owed. I gave my oath. I will make your wrath my own and avenge each blow against you. You will no longer hide as a wraith in the woods, and I will be freed of my curses. Well fed, I take up my sword and embark.
July 31, 2025 at 4:20 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
Damocles
Text of a poem titled Damocles: The blade that hangs above my head is a flood-rusted bowie knife that I bought after one sleepless night too many. Paranoia hit. The thread snapped. The swords I owned were too fragile for fighting, and too long for running, in case of apocalypse. Never mind I can't run very far. By the time the knife arrived, I was sane again. The end times were mostly shaken from my mind, despite the decades of haunting the end of the world has held over my house. In the backyard of that same home, returned to reluctantly after the flood that rusted the blade, my reflection is blurred and red-spotted and smeared with mud, but it is clearer than ever before.
May 5, 2025 at 2:22 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
Demeter in Spring

#poem #poetry #originalpoem #demeter #persephone
Text of a poem Each spring, my daughter returns from the underworld ice-cold and frost-hard. The only light in her is the cheap reflection of gold, shining against the shadow of death. I show her the sun again, but it’s hard for her to thaw— she freezes the new buds in the night many times before she finally lets them bloom. She can’t bear, at first, to let the sun kiss her cheeks, knowing she must lose the spring again. But she learns, and she laughs, as the days lengthen and shorten. And then my daughter returns to the darkness, and winter comes again.
May 2, 2025 at 1:54 AM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
I’m refreshing my creative energies the best way I can think of, with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I also picked up Evocation by @stgibson.bsky.social because I’ve been wanting to read it for ages!
April 22, 2025 at 9:48 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
I fear my mom found the limit to my whimsy when she called the cat my brother. He’s a wonderful cat. My brother, he is not.
A black cat with expressive green eyes sits on a chair like a person and gives the camera the side eye. He is a beautiful cat. He is not, however, my brother. And he knows this.
April 18, 2025 at 1:35 AM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
I was a fool and I didn’t post the best picture of the mushroom.
Same image description as above, a lake in early spring, a mushroom blooming like an alien flower beneath the surface of the waves. If you were using the alt text last time, you got a clearer picture of the mushroom than the people looking, due to the ripples in the surface. The ripples are a bit more favorable in this picture.
April 16, 2025 at 10:54 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
I went to Round Lake and only photographed one thing. This mushroom split into an alien flower when the water level rose.
A photograph of the bank of Round Lake. There are a few evergreens in the background, and the trunk of a tree that fell in the water some years ago. The water is very clear. In the water, you can see brown leaves from last fall, and a mushroom cap that has split open like a beige alien flower the size of a dinner plate.
April 16, 2025 at 3:03 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
#poem #poetry #nightmare
Text of a poem: We drive up an impossibly steep bridge to unsurvivable heights. We changes, each dream. Me and people I love. I’m in the passenger seat, or the back of the car, and I can’t make anyone turn around and not take the bridge. Everyone takes this road, they insist, it's normal, there's a line of traffic behind us, a toll booth, even, we can't slow down. The insistence on normalcy doesn't save us. Some nights I’m driving, hideously aware. Something is after us. It’s worth a shot. It has to be. I’m accelerating and begging for God and the car to do something impossible. Inevitably, the car slips and the rush of desperate speed stays in my veins when I wake up in the aftermath.
April 11, 2025 at 3:25 PM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
#poem #poetry #originalpoem #poet
Screenshot of an untitled poem: I had a red dot on the palm of my hand for over a year, near the left-hand fate line. I wondered for a while if I gave myself a tattoo of error when my grader's pen met an open wound without my notice. I thought cancer, then shrugged it off until the dot turned black, and sick, I poked at it with tweezers. When I was twelve or so, I fell off my bike. After an agonizing hour of first aid, everyone was sure all the gravel was gone but me. Vindication. The last piece of my childhood driveway worked its way up, cell by cell, and made its way to the surface.
January 13, 2025 at 1:02 AM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
#poem #poetry #originalpoem
Screenshot of an untitled poem: I need to look like a person again. I'm sick of looking like a kicked dog, because that resemblance makes people want to kick you, or look away, or ask questions like who kicked you and why don't you look like a person? If I could look like a person right now, I would be doing it. Questions don't help. I need options. A haunted doll could work. I could dig my collection out of my parents' basement, brush off the dust and study their frilly, composed gloom. I can copy it. It worked when I was young. But dolls can shatter, and I'm taller now. I'll mirror a willow tree, swaying in the wind and growing. People don't mind the weeping a willow does because you can get shade and poetry and medicine from the tree. That'll do.
January 12, 2025 at 3:24 AM
gracebriarwood.bsky.social
If anybody would like to check out my chapbook or maybe just drop a tip, now would be a great time! I'm a substitute teacher, and between being sick this week and the break I'm a bit behind this month.
ko-fi.com/gracebriarwo...
The cover of my chapbook. A cave is bathed in warm light, and the title, Eurydice's Tale, appears in grey
December 20, 2023 at 2:50 AM