sarah 🥀
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sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
sarah 🥀
@sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1.2K following 7.2K posts
poet, writer, she/her
ocd & anxiety warrior
🫶 mitski
sarahmillswrites.com
✨ debut poetry collection forthcoming in 2027 with Lit Fox Books ✨
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sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
soup season continues: white bean soup, pumpkin cornbread 🥣 🫶
a bowl of white bean soup with a piece of pumpkin cornbread randomly listening to Ben Folds, Oasis, Billy Joel, and the Counting Crows while making soup 😌
November 24, 2025 at 11:12 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
Franz Wright
THE POEM It was like getting a love letter from a tree Eyes closed forever to find you— There is a life which if I could have it I would have chosen for myself from the beginning
November 23, 2025 at 11:57 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
creamy red lentil tortilla soup (minus the tortillas 😅)
a green bowl filled with creamy tortilla soup that includes red lentils, black beans, corn, red pepper, spices, lime, and cashew cream. I’ll fix you a bowl ☺️
November 20, 2025 at 12:46 AM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
where it started

how it’s going
a pink sticky note that reads “lipstick fell,” a reminder to retrieve the lipstick that fell under my dresser a week ago 😅 a pink sticky note that reads “lipstick fell,” a reminder to retrieve the lipstick that fell under my dresser a week ago 😅
November 16, 2025 at 3:16 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
Some days, it feels like stars exist because a child/ tossed up glitter and said "night sky"✨

sharing a poem of mine from 2023, published in HAD
I Look at Pictures of Birds When I’m Too Sad to Go Outside I want to let you into this poem. I want us to breathe the same air. Some days, everything makes me sad— sitting down to put sneakers on, how late I came to appreciate birds, glitter. Once, I gave young students containers of glitter for an art project and for weeks it was in my hair, my cereal. My sister laughed and said never leave children unsupervised with glitter. Some days, it feels like stars exist because a child tossed up glitter and said night sky. I think I would’ve been a good mother but then I remember the glitter incident, or the time my nephew’s finger got stuck in a toy and my own finger hurt for weeks. I watched a time-lapse video of plants moving in a 24-hour period and it looked like interpretive dance so I filled my home with philodendrons. I don’t know what I’m trying to say here but I don’t want to lose you so I’ll offer this image: I saw a photo of a tree teeming with grandala birds, bright blurs of cobalt, and I wonder how their nests would sparkle if there was glitter among the twigs and leaves. I know my lungs will hurt if I let myself think about this, but I do.
November 14, 2025 at 8:51 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
I think I’m gonna have to have some of this today. it’s my favorite chocolate & if you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. It also has a little poem inside the wrapper. 😌
Chocolove Almonds & Sea Salt bar dark but sweet 😋
November 13, 2025 at 3:05 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
because I always write a poem when I’m sad 🧵🪡
Poem Sewn Together with Scraps of Discarded Poems I'm not easy xxx I know this xxx I'm trying to be open xxx my obsessions will ruin me xxx are ruining me xxx I know this xxx they said I was lost in the sky xxx I am still pulling clouds from my hair xxx I'm trying to reach you but I keep getting stuck x x x like a balloon tangled in a telephone wire xxx I call your name and my voice rides the wind xxx by the time it finds you xxx it no longer sounds like me xxx yes I would let longing xxx yes I would let envy xxx eat me alive xxx just to feel something xxx besides xxx gone sarah mills
November 10, 2025 at 10:23 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
just daydreaming ❄️ 📚 🪟 🎄
a stack of books: Elizabeth Bishop by Megan Marshall, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, Colorless Tsukuru by Haruki Murakami, and Wintering by Katherine May. Out the window: snow. I love snow, it absolves the darkness
November 9, 2025 at 2:31 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
okay, a little moon poem 🌙
I Always Look for an Exit Sign, Glowing Red but I want to look instead for the moon, shining through the dark curtains, a river of light breathing along the wall, she eats my poetry, night after night, drinks my metaphors, becomes whatever bright thing I ask her to be sarah mills 🌕
November 6, 2025 at 2:19 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
my friend sent this to me about 1-2 months before they passed away, and it’s not lost on me what a special gift it is, and I was thinking maybe I could crack it open today, maybe . . .
A book titled “Things to Look Forward To” : 52 Large and Small Joys For Today And Every Day, by Sophie Blackall
November 5, 2025 at 1:05 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
sweet potato tahini brownies 👀
sweet potato tahini brownies on a wooden tray
November 2, 2025 at 1:36 AM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
some chocolate chip halva cookies I baked once 😋
White tray with several chocolate chip cookies on top. On top of the cookies is melted halva!
November 2, 2025 at 1:21 AM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
thinking about the time I made tahini salted caramel oats - going to have to make these again soon 😋
a bowl of oatmeal with tahini, apple slices, and a “caramel” sauce made from date syrup
November 1, 2025 at 2:39 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
here’s my abecedarian about the time I got stranded on a haunted mansion ride 😱 published in Only Poems
ABECEDARIAN WHILE TRAPPED INSIDE THE HAUNTED MANSION RIDE Sarah Mills Anxiety's gloved hands were already on my throat by the time I was 16, so when mechanical issues forced the cart to a halt on the second floor of the haunted mansion ride, the darkness didn't faze me. Nor did the dangling skeletons, vampires emerging from coffins, or the disembodied hand crawling across the floor-what scared me was the mirror on the wall opposite me. It was gilded, slightly crooked, and housed my reflection: young, uncertain of what hung just around the figurative and literal corner. Someone in the cart behind me-whom I couldn't sec-started screaming: Just get me out of here! My reflection in the mirror laughed: who are you kidding? You're never getting out. Even then, I knew it was a metaphor. As the lights flickered on, I considered how comfortable I felt, how I might be more afraid of leaving than staying. That would become a theme—the novelty of fear stroking my hair with its long claws. The strobe lights were my obsessions, my heartbeats; the audio of sinister laughter and screaming people was my life's soundtrack. I thought: that coffin would make a fine bed. A quixotic plan, I now realize, but at the time I was possessed with a rare combination of adolescent idealism and dread that made the idea seem rational. The ride restarted and the cart made its way outside, where the ride attendant informed us where to go for a refund. Next time, use your voice, I imagined him whispering to me. I will, my imaginary self vowed-it's not that I was afraid to scream. I was afraid no one would hear me if I did. The attendant smiled, reassuringly, revealing xanthic teeth that reminded me of a row of gravestones that have yellowed with age. This was long before the era of hopping on Zoom to tell my therapist: I'm lost again, it's dark, I can't find my way through.
October 31, 2025 at 1:27 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
bouquet of light
a play of shadows and morning light on the wall from a nearby window everything reminds me of something else
October 31, 2025 at 12:49 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
brownies 🤎
Batch of 12 chocolate brownies made with white beans! One brownie is missing. 👀
October 28, 2025 at 7:49 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
Can’t wait to share a new prose poem forthcoming in the wonderful @asteralesjournal.bsky.social on Monday. Meanwhile, look at this handmade card the editors sent me, depicting themes from my poem. What a thoughtful gift. 🥹
A notecard with an abstract design in shades of gray. Collaged on top are the dictionary definitions for “empty” and “open,” along with a pair of orange socks.
October 18, 2025 at 4:44 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
just me & my boots against the world 🍁 🥾
black combat boots standing on grass with scattered red and brown leaves
October 16, 2025 at 4:25 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
when you try to find the poem, but the poem finds you
a tree with vibrant red leaves set against a bright blue cloudless sky
October 16, 2025 at 3:12 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
It’s OCD awareness month and I’m just getting around to sharing one of my Irene poems published in RHINO (@rhinopoetry.bsky.social) a few months back 🙏 🧠
Sarah Mills Irene, My OCD Brain, Calls Me Sweetie You're not at your functional level, my psychiatrist says. Yeah, no shit, Irene says, and I can feel my amygdala stretch which means she's smirking. I've never been the person to let emails pile up, one on top of the next like a stack of old newspapers. Add one more to the pile, dust billows and gets trapped in sunlight and it looks beautiful, a memory of everything that ever was and hope for everything that will be. My therapist would say to open one email, just one, and see what happens, but when I read Irene's instruction manual, the page containing the entry for Just One has been torn out. I've never been the person to leave bills unopened on the table for weeks at a time. But here you are, says Irene, being this person. And now I'm sad, so I get back in bed for the eighth time this morning, and Irene says oh, sweetie, sweetie, sweetie in a soothing voice. We can try again tomorrow. I know she wants to trap me in the same way dust stays suspended in light. But where does all the dust go at night? Where does it go when I can't see it?
October 15, 2025 at 7:52 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
reading
The cover of the poetry book “Scorched Earth” by Tiana Clark
October 11, 2025 at 12:44 AM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
a small poem ☔️
Morning Walk After Night Rain In the early morning, life resets and feels possible again. The sky is entirely mine to peel at the edges and adhere to whatever I don't wish to look at: my murky reflection, a Halloween lawn decoration deflated by heavy winds, potholes in the road. The truth is, I don't miss you. I miss the idea of you: the only part of you that wouldn't stick. --sarah mills
October 8, 2025 at 8:26 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
update: made this and it is the soup of my dreams
a white soup bowl filled with lemony chickpea soup containing chickpeas, carrots, spinach, broth, lemon (zest + juice), lots of fresh dill, etc.
October 2, 2025 at 10:59 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
I want to shake off my sadness
like leaves from a tree
Photo of me
October 1, 2025 at 10:09 PM
sarahmillswrites.bsky.social
I didn’t forget about you, cozy pink heart sweater 💖
A light pink sweater with a vibrant red heart occupying the center
October 1, 2025 at 4:35 PM