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Poetry Samples
Excerpts from the upcoming collection The Walls Remember Her
Between Both Worlds
Hades wore a woman's face,
Voice a blade, arms a brace.
Her mind, her eyes, her endless falls,
The bed, the stairs, the underworld.
Lifetimes stolen from her by a man,
Hardened to stone in her trembling hands.
She clutched too tightly, mistook control,
Split and served away her soul.
She gave me a crown of ash and bone,
Called me her heir, then left me alone.
Each minute I swallowed bound me more
A lifetime lived behind her door.
I became her mirror's flame,
Half myself, half her name.
Each day I felt her pull below,
Quiet grief I could not show.
But spring began beneath my skin,
A heartbeat small, a garden within.
I rooted myself where the soil was kind,
held him in sunlight, left her behind.
Still, she called from the shadowed bed.
Her voice like smoke, fingers spread.
I climbed and descended year by year.
Half in her world, half still here.
I was Persephone split in two,
Queen of the dead, mother of dew.
But hear me now, no more descent.
I am the garden's firm intent.
I plant my grief. I live. I mend.
I am the love she could not send.
At the End
I watched you die
Over several hours.
Knelt at your bedside
As your breath grew shallow.
I wanted to go back
But not to see you again.
To tell a younger self
Don't worry, friend,
She will not be alone
When this finally ends.
Living Room
I won't treat grief
Like love confined
To a hospice bed,
Sedated, neglected,
Kept quiet to dull the dread.
I don't want to move on.
I want to dance with it.
Sing its tune
At the top of my lungs
In the living room.
Fall to my knees
In a spill of tears.
As proof love survives
All of my years.
Tower of Books
I will inherit a tower of books.
Millions of stories bought.
The walls will sink
Beneath their weight,
Settling where love once sought.
Her shelves were bones within the house,
Lined with spines that learned to bow.
Each title, a relic of her escape,
Each margin etched with vows.
The pages smell of candle smoke,
Of grief, lavender, and rain.
She underlined what broke her heart
Then read it once again.
By night, her stories hummed the walls,
soft murmurs through the vents and beams.
Silence learned to whisper back
In a language made of dreams.
I grew up in her paper shrine,
Where fiction blurred the air.
She read to remember what she'd lost
I write to keep her there.
The house remembers every word.
Pulses beat on every spine and seam.
I live among her gathered words,
Writing our shared dream.