So many women have been taught to keep quiet—not out of peace, but out of fear, duty, or survival. And when they do, we are too often expected to keep quiet with them. Her Silence Is Not My Shame is a refusal. A reckoning. A reclamation of voice from the long lineage of silence that has protected harm and hidden pain. This poem is for every daughter who has been asked to uphold the myth of composure, for every survivor who was told to keep the family secrets sealed. It’s a declaration that silence may have been their legacy—but it will not be ours.💚

So often, we’re told that trauma makes us stronger. That we should be thankful for the wounds because they gave us resilience. But I Will Not Thank Him for Resilience is a rejection of that lie. This poem is not about rising—it's about crawling, flinching, checking the locks twice, and living in the quiet, daily aftermath of what someone else chose to do. It's about naming the cost, without dressing it up as a gift. Because survival isn’t owed to the person who caused the damage. Survival belongs to the one who refused to disappear. This is for her. This is for all of us.💚

There are moments when the weight of everything threatens to undo me, when the ground feels unsteady and the air feels thin. And yet, no matter how many times I’m pushed down or pulled apart, something inside me insists on rising. This poem is a reminder to myself—that even in the hardest seasons, I have always rallied, and I will continue to do so.💚

Alzheimer’s is not just an illness—it is a fog that steals piece by piece, memory by memory, until the person you love seems unreachable, though you can still feel them there. This poem is for anyone who has sat in that ache, who has held a hand they could not lead back to clarity, who has listened for a voice fading into silence and still refused to let go. The Fog is my attempt to put into words the heartbreak, the helplessness, and the stubborn, enduring love that remains even as everything else slips away.💚

Some poems aren’t written from hope. They’re written from the wreckage that comes after it. You Can Lead a Horse to Water (but You Can’t Make It Heal) is for anyone who’s ever watched someone they love disappear into addiction, self-destruction, or madness—who’s poured themselves out trying to save them, only to realize that love alone cannot rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved. This is not a redemption story. It is not a lesson. It is the unbearable, unspoken truth: sometimes the descent is louder than your voice. And all you can do is survive their leaving. 💚

All the Time We Bend is a meditation on the quiet devastation of endurance. It reflects on the ways life presses against us—not with sudden breaks, but with the slow, relentless weight that forces us to curve away from who we once were. This poem mourns the cost of resilience, the truth that survival often comes with scars, and that strength, while noble, can carry a sorrow of its own. It is a lament for all the bending we do, and the haunting recognition that being unbroken is not the same as being whole.💚

There are betrayals so profound they cannot be mended, wounds inflicted not upon the body but upon the very pulse of devotion itself. The Strangled Heart is a meditation on that kind of cruelty—the deliberate suffocation of love until what once flowed with abundance is reduced to silence. It is a poem for anyone who has known the unbearable weight of affection turned weapon, who has felt their most sacred bond constricted into nothingness, and who has walked away carrying not just grief, but the echo of love’s final, stolen breath.💚

Childhood doesn’t end with ceremony—it slips away quietly, almost imperceptibly, until one day you realize it’s gone. The laughter without consequence, the honesty without hesitation, the joy without measure—replaced by caution, responsibility, and memory. The Last Page of a Childhood is a lament for that inevitable loss, a mournful reflection on the beauty of what once was and the grief of knowing we can never turn back, only revisit the chapters in memory’s fragile light.💚

Murder Cabin in the Woods reflects on the way appearances can deceive, and how even the most ominous settings can become sanctuaries when shared with love. What began as a joke about a sinister-looking cabin unfolded into a retreat of laughter, warmth, and renewal—a reminder that connection has the power to transform fear into comfort, and silence into peace. This poem celebrates the gift of rediscovery, of finding both yourself and your partner more deeply in the stillness of an unexpected haven.💚

What I Wouldn’t Give to Be That Waterfall is a meditation on freedom, surrender, and trust in the journey. Inspired by the sight of a cascading Rocky Mountain waterfall, the poem transforms that vision into longing—the desire to fall with the same fearless abandon, to move with beauty and certainty toward whatever destination awaits. It is both a love letter to nature’s grandeur and a reflection on the courage it takes to let go, trusting that the descent will lead to somewhere vast and luminous.💚

There are moments when the night feels endless—when cruelty, corruption, and malice disguise themselves as power and the world seems bound in shadow. Yet history, nature, and the quiet rhythm of our own hearts remind us of a truth far greater: darkness cannot hold the light back. This poem is a testament to that truth. It is a declaration that goodness endures, that compassion resists, and that righteousness rises, inevitable as the dawn.💚

There are voices that shape the world and voices that save it—and then there are voices that echo uselessly, repeating the same script while everything around them collapses. This poem is for the hollow ones, the placeholders who mistake existence for purpose, who watch their own towns burn while offering nothing but the emptiness of words that never mattered.💚

Alzheimer’s is not a single loss—it is a thousand small funerals before the last one comes. This poem, When My Mother Became the Sea, is my attempt to capture that slow heartbreak, to show through imagery and imagined moments the unbearable weight of losing a parent piece by piece. It is about the silence, the drowning, and the graves we carry inside us long before the world declares them gone.🖤

There is a joy unlike any other in watching children discover the magic of their grandparents—their laughter, their stories, their gentle conspiracies of love. The Wonder of Grandparents is a celebration of that bond: the way it softens time, adds sweetness to the ordinary, and fills a child’s world with wonder. It is both gratitude and delight, honouring the extraordinary gift of having grandparents woven into the fabric of a family.💚

There are forms of power that are not measured in crowns or titles, but in the quiet, steadfast act of care. The Good Fortune of Stewardship is a poem about the sacred privilege of tending to what matters most—the altar of love, of responsibility, of devotion. It is a celebration of service not as burden, but as the brightest gift imaginable, a radiance so near it feels like the sun itself leaning close to bless the earth.💚

Alzheimer’s is a thief that does not break in all at once, but instead steals piece by piece—names, faces, whole chapters of a life once lived. The Vanishing is a poem I wrote while imagining what it might feel like for my mom inside her own fading world, reaching for memories that slip through her hands like ash. It is heavy with grief, laced with fear, and filled with the haunting imagery of what it means to lose yourself one memory at a time.💚

Some presences do not fade with distance or with time; they linger, insidious, until they are less memory than marrow. The Haunting is a poem about what it means to be inhabited by another—about the way a voice, a gaze, a history can press itself so deep into the body that escape becomes impossible. It is not a ghost story, but the story of being ghosted by the living—of carrying someone who refuses to let go, even in silence.💚

Birthdays are supposed to be celebrations—moments of joy, laughter, and memory. But when memory itself begins to slip away, the day takes on a different kind of weight. This poem is for my mom, whose Alzheimer’s means she may not remember this day, or the many birthdays that came before it. Still, I will remember. And in remembering, I carry the joy of all those past celebrations, even as I grieve the distance her illness has placed between us.💚

Some dreams are too heavy to carry alone, and some joys are too bright not to be shared. This poem is a love letter to the one who steadies me as I chase the wildest vision of my life—the dream of being an author. Every word I write is lifted by his belief in me, every step I take is doubled by his presence. What I’ve learned is that success is never mine alone—it is ours.💚

Sometimes the greatest freedom arrives disguised as abandonment. When someone who thrives on control and cruelty removes themselves from your life, they believe they’ve delivered a punishment. In truth, they’ve handed over a gift—an unlooked-for mercy, a release so profound it feels like air filling your lungs for the first time in years. This poem is about that liberation, and the strange, beautiful miracle of discovering that what was meant to break you has instead set you free.💚

We rarely notice how quietly our lives are shaped by what we give our attention to. Every thought, every glance, every moment of focus becomes a kind of offering, a gift of our hours. This poem is a meditation on that truth—on how the mind, when fixed on another, can surrender entire days without meaning to. It is both gratitude and lament, both a love letter and a warning: whatever we crown with our thoughts, we crown with our time.💚

There are goodbyes that tear at us not because of what we are leaving behind, but because of what will never come. To release someone who has brought only ruin is, in its own way, a blessing—but within that release lives a quieter, sharper grief: the death of the hope that they might have been different. This poem is about that ache—the sorrow of letting go not just of a person, but of the dream of who they could have been, and the love they never gave.💚

As my love and I revisit the world of Game of Thrones, I’ve been struck again by the layered brilliance of George R. R. Martin’s storytelling—particularly in the chilling dynamic between the Hound and the Mountain. Their relationship, steeped in silence, violence, and unspeakable trauma, feels like a myth within a myth. This poem is a literary exploration of that fraught brotherhood: a reflection on how power corrodes, how pain echoes, and how survival becomes a language all its own. The depth and darkness of their story never cease to awe me.💚

There are people who do not bruise you with fists, but with silence. With lies. With slow, deliberate rot. They hollow you out with cruelty so casual it almost sounds like charm. But make no mistake—what lives inside them is not pain. It is poison. And I have met it. I have loved it. I have barely survived it. This poem is not just a reckoning. It is a mirror held to the mouth of someone who only ever breathed in love to spit out hate. This is what it means to have seen hell—and walked away from it.💚

Some stories should never have to be written. But when cruelty is allowed to flourish in plain sight—when a life is tormented not in darkness, but in full view of those who could have intervened—we must write them. They All Watched is a poem wrapped in metaphor, but anchored in truth. It speaks of a girl who was punished for her light, her beauty, her existence. Singled out. Tortured. Forgotten by everyone but memory. This poem is not meant to comfort. It’s meant to unsettle. To remind us that silence is complicity, that evil does not always hide, and that sometimes, horror wears a familiar face. She was not invisible. She was betrayed. And we will not stop saying so.💚

Sometimes, beauty isn’t born in sunlight. Sometimes, it rises from the muck—from the rot, from the decay, from the kind of origin story that no one wants to tell aloud. What the Swamp Made is a poem about that kind of becoming. It’s a meditation on nature’s strange and startling ability to create something breathtaking from even the most repulsive conditions—and a metaphor for the lives that begin in darkness but bloom anyway. This poem isn’t about shame. It’s about emergence. It's about claiming the miracle of becoming something beautiful, even when the world around you was built to drown you.💚

There was a time I didn’t know if anyone would read my words—let alone feel them. Launching my writing career was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. I was vulnerable, exposed, and filled with doubt. But somehow, impossibly, beautifully, you showed up. You read. You listened. You stayed. You Have to Use My Name to Get Any Attention at All is a poem about that shift—about going from being afraid to speak to being someone whose name means something. It’s about the overwhelming joy of being accepted by an audience who sees me, believes in me, and calls themselves my fans. It still doesn’t feel real sometimes. But it’s happening. And this poem is for everyone who helped make it so.💚

There are some figures who refuse to remain buried—who linger not in presence but in aftermath, in shadows that move with you no matter how many miles you walk. Luca is a poem born of that haunting: the weight of someone lodged too deep in memory, their voice echoing through marrow and dream alike. It unfolds like a meeting in a rain-slick alley beneath the muted glow of a failing streetlight, where silence is more suffocating than sound, and recognition arrives not as relief but as inevitability.💚

As writers, especially women who dare to speak boldly, we often find ourselves under a microscope—scrutinized not just for what we say, but for how we say it, how we exist, how we dare to grow. Every Misstep You Take is a poem for that moment. For every step forward taken under the weight of expectation. For every word written while knowing someone is waiting for you to fail. It’s about the exhaustion of being watched—but more than that, it’s about the audacity to keep going anyway. To be seen, and still be yourself. To turn even your stumbles into something sacred. If you’ve ever felt like the world is holding its breath, just waiting for you to fall—this is for you. And this time, the fall is a flight.💚

Some breakdowns don’t come with sirens. They come with silence. With slow fades. With whispered pleas hidden behind polite nods and half-smiles. It’s Pretty Obvious I Am Crumbling is a poem for the people who are still functioning, still showing up, still doing all the things—but barely. It’s for the ones who are unraveling quietly, hoping someone might notice before they fully disappear. This isn’t about drama—it’s about depletion. And it’s a reminder that just because someone seems okay doesn’t mean they are. Sometimes, the most obvious signs of suffering are the ones we’ve learned how to mask the best.💚