This poem marks a definitive ending—the moment of stepping off a cycle that was never chosen but long endured. This Is the Period speaks to the experience of leaving something that functioned like slow erasure, a familiar swamp that confused survival with belonging and decay with home. It is a collective exhale for anyone who has exited a place that kept them tethered to harm, and a declaration of forward motion: clean, unencumbered, and finally free to become who they are without obstruction.

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 Everyone Is Toxic explores the idea that harm often emerges not from malice, but from unexamined wounds and outdated survival strategies.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.

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.