Briar Esterline’s career aspirations are leading him to the clinical psychology field, but the sophomore psychology major has another passion: writing.

At 17, Esterline became a self-published author with his 558 page mystery-horror novel Ablem’s Sanctuary. In August 2024, he published an individual poetry collection that he wrote over the course of two years, Psychopompous. He says he has been writing poetry on and off for a few years but became inspired after completing a writing class instructed by professor of english and modern languages Kevin Rabas. 

Just like his first novel, this latest work is self-edited, self-designed and self-published. He says the collection examines “self-love, growth, and heartbreak” and does so through a queer lens. 

“Some of (the poems) I wrote back long ago, like when I was going through my own teenage stuff,” said Esterline. “Then, I went through a break up over the summer, and it kind of pushed me into channeling all those feelings into (writing poetry), as corny as it sounds.” 

The title is an amalgamation of the words “psychopomp” and “pompous.” Psychopomp is a word of Greek origins, defined at the beginning of Esterline’s book as “the spiritual guide of a living person’s soul.” Likewise, “pompous is defined as “affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.”

Esterline explained his play on words further: “The title Psychopompous comes from thinking you know everything and then realizing you don’t, and that’s a very humbling experience.”

He breaks his collection into five chapters, describing the five stages of getting over a breakup: “Romanticizing,” “Refusal,” “Reeling,” “Retrospection,” and “Realization.” 

Esterline delved deeper into the meaning of a few of his alliterative chapter titles, like “Refusal,” which he relates to feelings of denial as a relationship breaks down. “Reeling” represents the realization that a relationship is not healthy, and “Retrospection” is coming out of a relationship and looking back at it, seeing that things weren’t so good after all.

While heartbreak of some sort is commonplace for nearly every human, Esterline believes it is important to portray what that experience is like for queer people. He says it is not always the same as it is for heterosexual people. 

“Queer people do experience love differently,” said Esterline. “Love is universal, but (at) a younger age in this generation, we don’t get to experience it like heteronormative people do. We usually have to do it secretly…a lot more pain comes with that. So, I think the importance of (writing) queer poetry is that it highlights what it’s like being queer and going through a breakup. This is what it’s like being queer and being depressed. This is what it’s like being queer and being like, ‘I love myself.’ Self-love is universal, love is universal, sadness is, but when you look at it through the lens of a queer person, it changes everything.”

Though all of the poetry in his book takes readers through his “self-evolution,” Esterline finds two poems especially resonate with him. Both are from the final chapter, “Realization,” which he says is the “full circle moment” when you realize “I’ll be okay.” The first is titled “church,” which in part reads:

“my love life is not religion—

it’s not something i need to blindly have faith in

i will not pray to you to get you to hear me,

when you always send me to voicemail”

“When I love someone” Esterlined said, “it shouldn’t have to be this guessing game of if they love me. I shouldn’t have to have faith that they love me. I need to see it.”

The second poem is the final of the chapter and the entire collection. It is called “twenty-five.’ The final lines of the poem read:

“you’re twenty-five

and you can feel the floor under your toes

the air in your nose

and everything is yours again.”

“I like (the ending) because it ends this melancholy sort of book on a good note,” Esterline said of the lines. “Give it a couple years, and it’ll be okay.”

Psychopompous is available for purchase at Middle Ground Books and Trox Gallery and Gifts in Emporia, and online on the Barnes & Noble website or amazon.com.