This poem is a declaration of withdrawal rather than confrontation—a refusal to continue supplying attention to systems that thrive on reaction rather than resolution. I’m Done Feeding the Machine explores the quiet power of disengagement, framing attention as labour and silence as strategy. It speaks to the moment of clarity when participation is no longer mistaken for impact, and when reclaiming one’s energy becomes an act of self-preservation rather than avoidance.

This poem challenges the impulse to sort people into simple categories of healthy and toxic, good and bad, inviting a more honest reckoning with shared imperfection. Everyone Is Toxic explores the idea that harm often emerges not from malice, but from unexamined wounds and outdated survival strategies. Without excusing harm or dismissing the need for accountability and boundaries, the poem argues for curiosity over condemnation—and for the radical possibility that compassion and responsibility can coexist in the difficult, ongoing work of being human together.

This poem interrogates the narrow scripts of femininity that reward women for being beautiful, compliant, and consumable, while punishing them for being changed by experience. Just a Little More Medusa Than Marilyn Monroe uses myth and iconography to contrast ornamental softness with earned power, asking what happens when a woman refuses to remain harmless for the comfort of others. It is a meditation on survival, anger as intelligence, and the radical act of choosing presence over palatability in a world that prefers women admired rather than fully alive.

This poem is an act of consent—to presence, to authorship, and to the ongoing work of becoming oneself without apology. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s words, The Great Adventure of Being Me reframes identity not as a fixed destination, but as a lived, evolving commitment. It speaks to the courage required to remain intact in a world that often rewards self-erasure, and to the quiet radicalism of choosing curiosity, agency, and fidelity to one’s own unfolding over inherited scripts or borrowed expectations.

This poem reframes the idea of unrealized potential, rejecting the notion that survival is a lesser outcome than becoming. Becoming Was Never the Failure speaks to the truth that many people did not fall short of who they could have been—they became exactly who their circumstances required in order to endure. It honours adaptation as intelligence rather than deficiency, and marks the quiet, powerful moment when survival gives way to choice. This is a poem about self-compassion, reclamation, and the rare grace of discovering that growth is still possible once safety is no longer in question.

This poem explores the quiet, often unexamined truth that much of what we praise as strength, resilience, and self-sufficiency is born not from abundance, but from absence. How Much of Me Is Compensation? considers the ways people adapt to what was denied them—how vigilance becomes wisdom, competence becomes survival, and endurance becomes identity. It is not an indictment of who we become in response to harm, but a tender inquiry into what those adaptations cost, and who we might have been if resilience had not been a prerequisite for existing at all.

This poem is an abdication of invisible labour—the moment someone steps out of the roles they were quietly assigned because they were capable, compliant, or compassionate enough to carry them. Letting Go of the Role speaks to the universal experience of being made the carrier, translator, buffer, rescuer, conscience, and glue within systems that rely on one person’s endurance to avoid accountability. It is not an act of abandonment, but of rebalancing: a decision to return weight to where it belongs and to reclaim a life rooted in chosen family, mutual regard, and love that does not require self-erasure to survive.

This poem examines the quiet, normalized violence of overgiving—the way devotion is so often measured by depletion, and care becomes indistinguishable from self-erasure. Burning Ourselves to Ash is not about individual failure, but about a shared cultural script that rewards endurance while punishing rest, that praises those who disappear in service of others and calls the outcome burnout instead of inevitability. It is a reckoning with the systems that rely on certain people to keep the fire going, and a refusal to keep mistaking self-immolation for love.

This poem is a reclamation—not born from anger, but from precision. It speaks to the moment when endurance stops being admirable and starts being extractive, when patience reveals itself as a cost rather than a virtue. I Don’t Have Time To Let You Waste Mine is about the quiet authority that arrives when we recognize time as a finite, non-renewable resource—and ourselves as worthy of protecting it. It is an articulation of boundaries set without apology, of clarity chosen over comfort, and of the profound self-respect required to stop negotiating our lives down to fit someone else’s delays.

The Non-Participation in the Emotional Economy That Keeps Us Bound is a reclamation of agency rooted in the radical simplicity of release. Inspired by the principles explored in Letting Go, this poem examines how much of our suffering is sustained through unconscious participation—through guilt, over-responsibility, and the belief that endurance is a form of love. Rather than advocating detachment, it offers discernment: a turning away from emotional transactions that demand self-erasure. This is a poem about energetic sovereignty, about choosing peace without justification, and about the quiet, transformative freedom that emerges when we stop carrying what was never ours to hold.

The Most Violent Thing of All confronts time not as an abstract concept, but as the most relentless and devastating force humans endure. This poem explores the slow, cumulative violence of loss—the way time dismantles love, presence, and certainty without spectacle or mercy, leaving grief to linger long after the damage is done. It speaks to the shared human experience of mourning what was taken incrementally, imperceptibly, and irreversibly. Rather than offering comfort, the poem names the sorrow many carry silently: the ache of living forward while love is forced to remain behind.

You Just Have To Roll Your Sleeves Up is a meditation on effort as an ethical choice rather than an emotional state. Rejecting motivation and inspiration as prerequisites, this poem centres labour itself as the point of transformation—where clarity, capability, and self-respect are built through action. It reframes grit not as spectacle or suffering, but as quiet consent to engage with difficulty honestly and repeatedly. This is a poem about beginning without guarantees, meeting reality with one’s hands, and allowing the work to do its shaping.

One Pole At A Time is inspired by the quiet, radical practicality of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope—a reminder that even the most extraordinary acts are built from ordinary, repeated decisions. Rather than mythologizing endurance, this poem focuses on the discipline of breaking the impossible into survivable increments, choosing forward motion without needing to conquer the whole distance at once. It invites the reader to reframe their own challenges through this lens: not as overwhelming totals, but as a series of reachable markers. This is a poem about hope made actionable, about persistence without spectacle, and about the power of committing to the next step—again and again.

Dragging Mud Across a Clean Floor is a poem about boundary violation after healing—about the particular violence of intrusion once hard-won peace has been established. Using visceral metaphor, it captures the exhaustion and revulsion of having one’s recovery repeatedly contaminated by someone unwilling to respect distance or accountability. This poem is not fueled by impulsive anger, but by clarity: it distinguishes between accidental harm and deliberate disregard, and names the quiet cruelty of insisting on access where none is welcome. At its core, it is a declaration of sovereignty—of the right to keep what has been cleaned, protected, and reclaimed.

I Will Drop Everything to Hang Out With You is a celebration of long-term love that refuses the narrative of diminishment. This poem explores a partnership defined not by obligation or routine, but by sustained desire, curiosity, and chosen proximity. Thirteen years in, it honours a love that remains conversational, magnetic, and deeply playful—a relationship where presence is still the highest priority. Rather than dramatizing romance, the poem elevates its quiet miracle: the continued, enthusiastic preference for one another, again and again, without fatigue or compromise.

How Alive I Am Willing to Be is a declaration of agency in the act of living. This poem frames aliveness not as something granted or accidental, but as a conscious choice—one that requires openness to risk, sensation, and transformation. It reflects on the tension between safety and immersion, asking what it truly costs to remain present in one’s own life. With measured intensity, the poem honours courage not as spectacle, but as the daily decision to feel deeply, move toward experience, and inhabit the world without numbing what makes it vivid. This is a meditation on choosing life fully, deliberately, and without apology.

Adaptation explores the invisible ways people evolve in order to survive emotional injury. Rather than depicting resilience as dramatic transformation, this poem traces the subtle recalibrations that occur beneath the surface—shifts in perception, boundary, and self-preservation that are almost imperceptible from the outside. It reflects on adaptation as a form of intelligence: a quiet, strategic reordering of the self that allows tenderness to endure without remaining exposed to harm. This is a poem about survival not as spectacle, but as precision—and about the profound life that continues after pain has reshaped the landscape within.

The Bones Are Good is a meditation on lineage, resilience, and the relief of rediscovering where one truly comes from. Through the language of roots and growth, this poem reflects on how dysfunction in one small part of a family can obscure the strength of a much wider inheritance. It explores the joy of reconnection—of finding abundance, warmth, and care in extended kinship—and reframes belonging not as proximity to harm, but as alignment with what is enduring and life-giving. This is a poem about returning to what was always there, waiting to be claimed.

The Empath and The Worm examines the asymmetric psychological dynamic between empathic individuals and narcissistic personalities, grounding its imagery in well-documented patterns of manipulation, projection, and emotional predation. Drawing on psychological concepts rather than metaphorical mysticism, this poem explores how empathy is exploited as a resource, how boundaries are reframed as harm, and how care is weaponized against those inclined to offer it. Rather than dramatizing the encounter, the poem anatomizes it—revealing disengagement, not confrontation, as the true point of power. This is a poem about recognition, withdrawal, and the quiet finality of choosing not to be consumed.

The Golden Egg is a meditation on the cost of conditional love within narcissistic family dynamics, focusing on the child elevated, protected, and quietly erased all at once. This poem approaches the golden child not as a villain, but as a casualty—shaped by approval, deprived of autonomy, and taught that safety depends on perfect alignment. It explores how borrowed power replaces identity, how specialness becomes a trap, and how the absence of a self is often mistaken for strength. Above all, this poem is an act of mourning: for the person who might have existed if love had not required such total surrender.

This Is Not a Game is a declaration of irrevocable boundary, written in response to repeated violations disguised as persistence, entitlement, or misunderstanding. This poem rejects the minimization of harassment and exposes the manipulation embedded in refusing to accept no as an answer. With controlled fury and precise language, it dismantles the fantasy that access can be negotiated once consent has been withdrawn. This is not a plea or an explanation—it is a formal severance, asserting autonomy with clarity, contempt for intrusion, and the certainty of an ending that does not require agreement.

The Misery You Make examines suffering not as an accident of circumstance, but as a consequence of sustained choice. This poem interrogates how comfort, when paired with entitlement and avoidance, can curdle into resentment—and how that resentment is often externalized through harm inflicted on others. Rather than locating misery in trauma or loss, it exposes the quieter, more unsettling reality of self-manufactured suffering: the kind created to avoid accountability, introspection, and growth. This is a poem about ethical causality—and about the cost of refusing to become more when nothing is standing in the way.

All Their Projections is a clinical and moral dissection of narcissistic defence, examining how projection functions not as a momentary lapse, but as a structural necessity within narcissistic pathology. Drawing on psychological language and diagnostic insight, this poem exposes the mechanisms by which shame, guilt, and aggression are expelled and reassigned to others in order to preserve grandiosity and avoid accountability. It interrogates the violence of moral inversion—where the harmed are recast as perpetrators and truth itself becomes a threat—and reveals projection not as power, but as evidence of a psyche organized around evasion rather than integrity. This is a poem that names the system, not just the damage.

Attitude of Gratitude interrogates the difference between performative positivity and lived, authentic gratefulness. Rather than presenting gratitude as a prescribed mindset, this poem explores it as a slow, earned orientation—one that cannot bypass pain or be adopted on command. With philosophical restraint, it traces the space between knowing and embodying, acknowledging the work required to arrive at gratitude without denying truth. This is a poem about refusing spiritual shortcuts, choosing authenticity over optics, and trusting that real gratefulness emerges not through posture, but through presence.

Listening to Brené Brown and Walking in the Woods is a meditation on healing that resists drama and instead returns to wonder. Rather than recounting pain directly, this poem follows the subtle reawakening that happens when insight meets movement, and when the natural world offers its steady, ancient reassurance. It reflects on the sacredness of breath, body, and belonging, suggesting that meaning—and even divinity—are found not in answers, but in the shared continuity of life itself. This is a poem about remembering how to be present, and about the soft, enduring companionship of healing as it unfolds.

Pushing Harder is a meditation on disciplined ambition—the kind rooted in responsibility rather than fear. This poem examines the drive to create, build, and refine across every aspect of life, while refusing to romanticize exhaustion or credit suffering for strength. It acknowledges the cost of relentless momentum, the lessons learned through fracture and failure, and the evolution from force to discernment. Ultimately, this poem celebrates perseverance as a cultivated skill: a form of intelligence that knows when to press forward, when to listen, and how to pursue excellence without turning ambition into self-harm.

Boxes reflects on the subtle, often well-intentioned ways we organize our relationships—and the unseen cost of that order. Rather than condemning the impulse to define roles, this poem examines how categorization can quietly limit intimacy, curiosity, and growth. It considers what is lost not through conflict or refusal, but through assumption: the connections that never deepen because they were never allowed to. This is a meditation on the difference between kindness and openness, and on the expansive possibilities that remain untouched when we mistake clarity for completion.

(I Didn’t Just Survive Them) I Outgrew Them reframes survival as a threshold rather than an identity. This poem moves beyond the language of endurance to explore what happens after harm is metabolized—when growth creates distance, scale, and perspective that render former threats irrelevant. It is not concerned with proving resilience or revisiting injury, but with naming the quiet power of expansion: the moment when a life becomes too large to be shaped by those who tried to contain it. This poem stands as a declaration of arrival—not back to who one was, but forward into something bigger.

The Ones Who Couldn’t Stop examines the moral failure at the centre of sustained harm: the refusal to interrupt oneself. This poem shifts focus from the survivor to those who perpetuate cruelty not because they must, but because stopping would require accountability, effort, and change. It interrogates how violence is normalized through momentum, how harm is passed forward under the guise of inevitability, and how those who cannot stop often resent anyone who proves that stopping was always a choice. This is a poem about repetition as cowardice—and about the quiet threat posed by anyone who steps out of the cycle.

I Just Kind Of Stopped is a poem about what happens when harm is pushed so far that stopping becomes the only remaining act of agency. It explores the moment when survival no longer looks like fighting back, but like stepping out of reach altogether—refusing to continue feeding cruelty, manipulation, and collective violence. Through the imagery of vultures and harbingers, the poem reframes withdrawal not as defeat, but as a strategic and transformative victory. This is a poem about choosing containment over collapse, silence over spectacle, and discovering that what looks like an ending can become the beginning of freedom.