Eira Quinn

Poet | Author 🖤 I write words for people who feel out of place in the machine. *Buy my book!*

[eirawritesfire]

If There Is a Heaven, Let It Be This

If there is a heaven,

let it be soft.

Let it be quiet in the right ways.

No shame behind the silence,

just space enough to breathe.

Let it smell like rain

on warm pavement.

Let it sound like your own voice

finally saying

”you don’t have to try so hard anymore.”

Let there be laughter.

The belly kind.

The kind you forgot how to have

when survival became a second language.

Let it be a place

where the queer kids

dance without flinching.

Where the men feel and

never have to explain.

Where the women aren’t saints or sinners—

just people,

finally allowed to rest.

Let it be a garden

no one gets kicked out of.

Let the water be clean.

Let the air be kind.

Let no one call it holy

just because someone else can’t enter.

Let it be a place

where no one is hungry.

For food.

For touch.

For safety.

For love that doesn’t expire

when you doubt.

Let it be

the apology the world never gave you.

The hug no one thought you needed.

If there is a heaven,

let it be this:

No gate.

No throne.

No final exam.

Just a light that says

“I see you.

I know how hard it’s been.

Come in anyway.”

-Eira Quinn

[eirawritesfire]

I’ve been told it’s a gift.

That sensitivity

is strength

and softness

is rare.

But I’ve lived long enough

to know it’s also

a burden.

Even joy

is sharp.

Beauty

makes my chest hurt.

I see something lovely

(a child dancing,

a tree lit just right)

and I ache

because it’s fleeting. 

I’m always a little

too full.

Like my heart is a glass

half-tipped

in a room

with no steady hands.

Everything hurts

just a little.

But I’d rather feel

too much

than feel nothing at all.

But god,

sometimes

I wish there was

an easier way

to be here.

~Eira Quinn

[eirawritesfire]

A Soul Lobotomized by Eira Quinn

I’m told in heaven sorrow is impossible. No grief. No mourning. No pain.

And when I asked What about the ones I love? The ones who didn’t believe? The ones you say are burning?

I'm told, you won’t remember them.

Or worse: you will, but you won’t care.

And that’s supposed to be paradise?

To forget the people I’ve cried for, fought for, built my life around?

To stand on golden streets while their skin melts below and feel nothing?

That’s not peace. That’s something worse.

That’s a soul lobotomized. A heart sanitized. A memory wiped clean of compassion, so it fits neatly into God’s idea of joy.

[eirawritesfire]

Happy Mother’s Day, to the ones who made whole worlds in their bodies. You are magical.

———

And So They Made Him a God,

by Eira Quinn

In the beginning,

there was a woman.

She bore life with her own hands

and fed the world from her body.

She built shelter from nothing

and filled it with heartbeat.

She was the origin story.

The fire. The flood.

The first word.

And they hated her for it.

Because how do you conquer

what refuses to be claimed?

So they called her dangerous.

Carved her voice into silence.

Burned her wisdom with her body

and named the ashes sacred.

They took birth

and called it a curse.

Took her image from the heavens

and replaced it with a man on a throne.

Because it was easier to kneel

before something that looked like them.

So they rewrote the beginning.

Said HE made the world.

Said HE breathed life into dust.

Said woman came second—

from a rib, no less.

And just like that,

the one who created life

was made into a footnote.

But some of us remember

the stories written in stretch marks.

The hymns sung in lullabies.

The truth buried in our bloodlines.

We remember

that God was a woman

before they rewrote the script.

And no matter how loud they preach,

how hard they pray to the sky,

the earth still knows

who made her.

[eirawritesfire]

It’s been a long time coming, but I FINALLY finished my online Reader’s Guide for Let There Be Thought.

I annotated my work with the biblical texts they’re talking back to, plus additional commentary.

It’s there if you want to follow along while you read, if you want to come back to it after, (it's also cool if you just want to keep your own interpretations to yourself). Whatever you need.

Oh, and there are reviews from a lot of you from here and Goodreads! i used first name & last initial for privacy (unless you gave me permission otherwise), but I’m more than happy to update it if you want a more specific credit or less, or none at all.

Appreciate you guys! 🥰

Reader's Guide - Let There Be Thought

[eirawritesfire]

The Trump administration has stolen centuries from us. Not metaphorically.

Add up the hours we’ve lost to fear, delays, barriers, medical danger, burnout, grief, and “workarounds” for basic rights, across everyone alive in the U.S. That’s what they took. Time. Life.

Not just this administration. It’s been going on for years, mostly Republican administrations dragging us backward, and the rest managing the fallout without giving us our lives back. If you add up what’s been taken across all of us, it’s a lot..

10 million people × 10 hours = 100 million hours

100 million hours ÷ 8,760 hours/year ≈ 11,415 years

That’s 114 centuries… from a conservative estimate.

Stretch that across the full span, and you’re looking at millennia.

[eirawritesfire]

Exit Wound

by Eira Quinn

What better way

to make people stay

than to threaten them

with eternal pain?

They say it’s justice.

That love can be proven

through fire.

But ask yourself:

What kind of god

creates children

with soft hearts

and open hands

only to burn them

for being human?

What kind of mercy

damns a soul

for asking questions?

What kind of justice

requires forever

to punish a moment?

If love must be feared,

is it love at all?

If salvation means silence,

who does it save?

If hell is the price

of being alive,

then your god

makes monsters

of us all.

[eirawritesfire]

I’ve had people tell me “you should actually read the Bible sometime” like it’s a gotcha, when in reality, reading it all the way through is one of the reasons I stopped believing.

If more believers read their holy book with the same critical thought they’d bring to any other book, and if they stopped skimming for comfort and started looking straight at what’s there, I think there’d be way more agnostics.

[haunted-limpet]

Isaac

Do you think he was scared

Walking up that mountain side?

Do you think he suspected

He was to be sacrificed

Up on that holy rock?

I think he wondered some

About what was going on;

What had been asked

Of son, by father, by Father.

I think in the nights after,

He hid and he cried

(Like Jesus in Gethsemane,

Waiting to be crucified)

About that night he nearly died

On the whims of a father;

Who thought he heard God

And believed that notion godlier

Than protecting his own son.

I think he and I,

We have some things in common:

We want to get far, far away

From that holy mountain altar;

From backboneless fathers

And mouthless mothers

And a world that does not scream

When a child bleeds out

For the pride of some jealous power

@eirawritesfire

[eirawritesfire]

Sunday School

They told me about Noah,

but not the bodies.

Not the screaming

beneath rising water,

or the mothers

who begged God for mercy

as he watched from the clouds

and said nothing.

I heard about Job,

but they skipped the bet.

The part where God let the Devil

ruin a man’s life

just to prove a point.

Killed his children.

Stripped his skin.

And called it

righteous testing.

They told me about Abraham’s faith,

but not Isaac’s trauma.

Not what it does to a boy

to see his father raise a knife

with heaven’s approval.

Not the silence that follows

when you survive a god

who wanted you dead.

No one mentioned the concubines,

the raped,

the forgotten wives,

the daughters sold

for the price of land

or peace

or power.

They didn’t talk about

stoning disobedient sons,

or killing gay lovers,

or what to do

if a woman is not a virgin

on her wedding night.

They said Jesus died for us,

but not that God

could’ve chosen forgiveness

without blood.

That maybe the crucifixion

wasn’t salvation,

but spectacle.

They said “trust the Word,”

but they handed me

a censored book

and a list of acceptable questions.

And when I asked

about the rest,

they said

“have faith.”

But faith without truth

is just fear

in nicer clothing.

And now that I’ve read

what they skipped—

now that I’ve seen

what they hid—

I can’t go back

to coloring pages

and quiet amens.

The god they taught me

was edited.

Redacted.

Rebranded.

But the truth?

The truth was always there.

In the margins.

In the footnotes.

In the blood.

[bitesizedpoetry]

Sylvia Plath, aged 23, from "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath" (dated Sunday, February 26, 1956)

[eirawritesfire]

The Bottle’s Religion

My brother has become a stranger in installments.

He isn’t possessed, he’s just rented. Late fees in the form of apologies that don’t touch the damage.

The bottle asks for a little at first. A little peace, a little laughter, until the whole house is arranged around it like furniture shoved to the edges to make room for a storm.

I have watched it turn his mouth into a weapon he swears he can’t remember holding.

I have seen it teach him entitlement as a second language, so fluent it sounds like truth.

And my mother with her hands full of mercy, her spine full of years, becomes the nearest thing to blame.

But she holds on to the hope he’ll change, she’ll get her son back.

Because she is still capable of imagining him before this.

I miss my brother like a missing tooth, tongue worrying the empty space.

I hate the bottle because it doesn’t just take him. It drafts the rest of us into the labor of surviving him.

It turns love into a job. It turns peace into something you earn by being smaller.

I want him back. I want the house to stop flinching. I want my mother to live in her own life without negotiating with the storm.

[cervus-scribe]

✍🏼 Word find tag (throw, catch, hold, and drop)

Thanks to @winterandwords for the tag!

📝 Search for the given words in your story. If your story doesn't have a word, you can use a variation on it or a word with a similar meaning.

These are from 𝔸𝕕𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕖.

Throw:

You throw arms and legs around him, minding his tail, clinging to him like a spider. You wondered if poor Arachne was still out there, and finally had the last laugh.

Catch:

The island wasn’t short of fish, nor were any of you short on time to catch them. It wasn't about sustenance. It was about connection. They wanted to be a part of anyone's story, even by force.

Hold:

You rest your head on his shoulder. It is broad and thick with muscle and you want to recoil. Will your body become this, lose the softness it holds now and become hard and thick and tough? Your body feels like yours for now, but it will change.

Drop:

There’d been talk of the old gods, of you and Belle, journeying to Olympus to take up the mantle once again. You had no interest in it. You were fine wasting away, like the creatures dropping like flies around you. Attis was gone, and so were the gods. Things seemed so pointless. Now Cybele was gone, and you remained.

Tagging @purple-on-black, @destinycraftswords, @blades-of-calmoran (I'm going to keep doing this until you share something because I LOVE YOU, DAMN IT) @writingwithoutconfidence & @jaylex05 so I can see some more work from you folks :)

Your words are: fight, jump, hard, fate

[writingwithoutconfidence]

Thanks @cervus-scribe for the tag!!

📝 Search for the given words in your story. If your story doesn't have a word, you can use a variation on it or a word with a similar meaning.

I’ll use my short stories of Ayla and Veyru because I love them...

Note: The POV changes from 3rd person and 1st person depending on which short story I choose, but it’s usually focusing on Ayla to clear any doubts.

Fight:

"I came back early," he said. "The river had risen. The crabs were gone. I thought—I thought you would be sleeping, or sorting moss, or doing any of the small things you do when you think yourself alone." His ears twitched, lifted. "I did not think you would be fighting a war."

Start: (I have no 'jump' in my story or 'bound', 'leap', 'hop' e.g. T^T)

Ayla laughed. It startled her, that sound, bright and unpractised. 

Veyru pulled back just enough to look at her, eye-to-eye despite his huge height. "You, little light, are the reason why the dark isn't so lonely anymore." He touched her face, one claw tracing the line of her cheek with infinite care. "To sing when no one else is around, and to keep singing even when someone is—this is the most bravest thing of all."

Hard:

"Because the alternative wasn't living. It was just waiting to die." Marta squeezed her fingers. "You're difficult, Sera. You're loud and stubborn and you feel everything too much. But you're mine. And I don't keep what's mine because it's easy. I keep it because losing it would be harder than any difficulty you could give me."

Chance: (I HAVEN'T GOT FATE EITHER Y^Y)

"I lack nothing," she said. "That's what the magic doesn't understand. I had everything. I chose everything. My thirst isn't for what I missed—it's for what I left behind. For the chance to say goodbye properly. To tell him—" her voice broke, "—to tell him that he was my family. That he was enough. That the love we built was real, even if no one else would call it by that name."

Tagging: @alexazucchie @justluchii @ponderingpen @aster-spring-fell @crankynovelist @digitalkiddo @eirawritesfire @for-the-ouchies @iamstillwriting75 @iamafkrn @potatoanarchist @heyvani7y @whumblr @penningbookwurm @orcaraminga @temisjanaina.

Your words are: name, warm, gain, true

Have fun!!

[eirawritesfire]

Thanks @writingwithoutconfidence for the tag!!

📝 Search for the given words in your story. If your story doesn't have a word, you can use a variation on it or a word with a similar meaning.

I’ll pull from my poetry book, Let There Be Thought 😊

Name:

If that god is real, he may have force, but he doesn’t have my reverence.

I don’t claim certainty. I just live like the proof never came.

And if it ever does— if the stars spell his name and the dead rise to greet me— still, I will choose love over blind allegiance.

Warm:

If there is a heaven, let it be soft. Let it be quiet in the right ways. No shame behind the silence, just space enough to breathe.

Let it smell like rain   on warm pavement.   Let it sound like your own voice   finally saying   “you don’t have to try so hard anymore.”

Gain:

They called it a fall. But it was a reaching. A becoming. The first act of conscious love for a world we had yet to build.

They say we lost perfection. I say we gained purpose, and walked out with nothing but each other.

True:

They handed me a censored book and a list of acceptable questions. And when I asked about the rest, they said “have faith.”

But faith without truth is just fear in nicer clothing.

Tagging: @strangeintrovert07 and @astraeasi13nce

Your words are: love, true, body, home

Have fun!!

[eirawritesfire]

This comment hit me right in the chest.

Uncomfortable but necessary is the point, and I'm grateful there are men who are listening. 🤍🫡

[eirawritesfire]

The world’s smallest coffin

is a girl told to behave.

It doesn’t get buried all at once.

That would at least be honest.

Instead it begins as instruction:

Don’t sit like that.

Don’t laugh so loud.

Don’t stay out late.

Don’t wear that.

Don’t want too much.

Don’t walk alone.

Don’t make a scene.

Don’t make him angry.

Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Every warning

was really one lesson:

don’t be easy

to notice.

So girlhood learned

to move like contraband.

Parking lot lights.

Keys between knuckles.

Instinct renamed paranoia

until the old aftermath

proved it right again.

And underneath all that warning

was the verdict that

if harm finds you,

it becomes yours to explain.

We will search your choices

before we search the man.

That is the clerical error

at the heart of it.

Girlhood entered the world

as wonder

and was cataloged instead

as risk.

Yet through all that barbed caution,

girls kept becoming.

Messy. Brilliant. Unfinished.

More alive

than the warnings

ever knew what to do with.

[eirawritesfire]

We found your footprints.

They were pressed into the dirt

of the years you barely survived.

We followed them.

That’s why we’re writing.

Because you need to know

what all your refusing,

your resisting,

your throat-torn shouting

built for us.

In our world,

girls are born unafraid.

Boys are raised unarmed

from the inside out.

No one learns shame

as a second language.

The forests are growing back.

The oceans don’t choke.

People listen the first time.

To each other,

to the earth,

to the quiet bodies

that were once made

to scream to be believed.

We have leaders

who don’t need thrones,

only tables long enough

for everyone to sit.

We teach consent

before multiplication.

We teach empathy

before excellence.

We teach strength

as something you share,

not something you wield.

You helped us get here.

Every time you spoke

when the world begged you

to hush.

Every time you said no

to what tried to own you.

Every time you cracked a door

that someone else

would one day walk through.

You didn’t get to see this future.

Not fully.

But we do.

And we know the cost

came out of your hide.

So here’s our thank you:

We have a world

that would’ve loved you

the way you deserved

the first time around.

A world that finally knows

how to hold

what you tried so hard

to protect.

A world

where no one has to be

as brave

as you had to be.

And if there is any sorrow left,

it is only this:

You should’ve had this too.

---

Note:

I titled this piece “A Letter From the World You Made Possible.”

It’s a bit of hope I try to give myself to keep fighting, because the people who come after us deserve better than what they’re inheriting (as we deserved better than what we were handed).

I don’t want my legacy to be more of the same.

[eirawritesfire]

Something is wrong with the gravity here. The sky looks familiar but it doesn’t behave like it used to.

I walk through my day and everything is functioning. Traffic lights, emails, polite smiles. But underneath it all there’s something very wrong. Like the world has been occupied and no one announced it.

I look at people now and feel like I am behind glass.

Like I landed somewhere close to home but not quite right. Like the rules changed and no one stopped the simulation.

How do we keep living knowing what we know now?

How do we laugh when the air is still carrying echoes no one will answer for?

I don’t feel dramatic. I feel displaced.

Like my ethics belong to a species this planet no longer prioritizes.

If this is humanity, I’m grieving it in real time.

And if this is the world, really, then the most alien thing left is still caring.