Closure (Part 2: Aftermath)

I hang my coat,
wash my hands twice,
stand at the sink
watching water spiral
down the drain.

I remember the sound
of my name on his lips —
how it sounded distant,
like someone else's story,
someone he didn't know.

Please forgive me.

His words ring hollow,
and I feel a cold clarity:
he wanted peace for himself,
not for me.
There's a difference
between remorse
and reckoning.

I sit in the dark by the window,
light from the streetlamp
drawing bars across the floor,
and I understand —
Sometimes closure
comes without healing.

Maybe it's just the sound
of a guilty plea
landing in a place inside me
that's no longer empty.

 

Closure (Part 1: Confrontation)

The room smells like Clorox and old sweat.
Shoes echo on the concrete floor,
and the wall clock ticks too loud.

The guard buzzes the door open.

He is smaller than I remember,
thinner, eyes dull, like the years
have scraped him hollow.

I'm not the child he knew,
but I see the shape of his mouth change
when he recognizes my face.
He looks away when he says my name.

I say what I came to say.
My voice shakes, holding back tears.
His eyes are fixed on the floor,
but I see a tremble in his shoulders
as the truth lands, finally,
where it belongs.

He tries to speak
without meeting my eyes.
Words don't come.
He shakes his head,
calls for the guard.

Please forgive me.

Barely a whisper,
swallowed by the closing door.

I return to the car.
He doesn't ask how it went,
just takes my hand, waits.

We sit like that
until I can breathe.

And we drive home
in silence.

 

Eight Thousand Sixty-Seven Sunrises

Eight thousand sixty-seven times,
the sun has risen for me.

Even when I didn't want it to.

There were mornings when light
felt like a lie,
when childhood was a cage
and love wore a cruel mask.

I grew up anyway.
Like a flower through a crack
in a concrete sidewalk,
I found my way toward light.

I learned to listen
to the quiet between storms,
the whisper of my own breath
telling me to keep going.

Morning always came.

Now, here I stand,
where the paved path
vanishes into wildflowers,
footprints behind me
making way for new life.

This is my next page.
The ink is still wet,
the air smells like hope.
And the sun —
the eight thousand sixty-eighth sun —
is rising.

 

Knowing

You never knew the shape of it,
only the shadow it cast.

My voice trembled
the night I told you,
drowning us both
in a flood of horror.

Shame curled in my gut,
fear thick as fog,
hoping you wouldn't turn away,
see me as cracked porcelain,
once beautiful,
now ruined.

But you didn't.

You held me,
not like something broken,
but something sacred.

Your eyes found mine
and didn't look away.

That's when I knew.

 

Inheritance

The body remembers hands like stories etched in a language of shame.


I hate my face.

I have shattered mirrors
just to gather pieces
of myself
he couldn't touch.

 

Echo Overlook

There's a trail that winds beyond the last fence post
past birches and maples,
where pine trees bend with the wind,
and every footstep breaks the silence.

Through green cathedral light,
trees open like a vaulted ceiling
and the world drops off into sky.

Echo Overlook.

A crown of stone above the river's ribbon,
where hawks glide silent in widening spirals
and the world stops.

I used to go there with clenched fists,
swallowed by something too big for words,
too sharp for tears.
I would shout until my voice
broke into pieces
and flung itself
back at me
again
and again —
not answers,
just proof I was still making sound.

No one could hear me.
No one needed to.

It was enough to let the mountain hold my rage,
to hurl it like a stone
into that vast and waiting blue
and know it would not shatter the world.

Years have passed since I went there.
The woods have likely changed,
grown thicker or forgotten the path by now.
But sometimes
in the brittle pause between dreams,
I feel it calling.

And I wonder
what I would shout
if I went there again.

 

 

Every Goddamn Night

I blink hard against the darkness.
The air is too quiet,
my heartbeat too loud in my ears.
The dream still clings,
sweat and memory a tight braid
at the back of my neck.

The room is still.
My hand slips between my legs,
ritual reassurance
that no one else is there.

I focus on my ribs,
my skin,
fingertips —
anything
to convince me
I’m not back there again.

Morning will come.
It always does.

But tonight,
I have to remember
how to breathe.

 

Diary

I never learned the rules
about meter or metaphor,
or what not to say out loud.

I just write what lives inside me:
the bruises, the blossoms,
the damage, the dawn,
and echoes of thunder
kept quiet too long.

A diary with line breaks —
that’s all this is.
Unpolished,
unapologetic.
Pages smeared with yesterday,
inked with aches of becoming.

Sometimes words stumble,
sometimes they bleed,
sometimes they hunger
like a hymn I never sang
but always knew.

I never cared
for pretty lies or perfect poems.
I scribble joy in crooked margins,
fold sorrow into paper birds,
let them fly across the page.

This is how I stay alive —
by telling the truth
exactly how it hurts
and how it heals.

Sometimes it's enough.

 

Given

It started with trust.
a quiet wanting, then a breath
on skin I’d forgotten was mine.

A hand,
a mouth,
the slow undoing
of what I’d locked away.

Not taken this time —
given.
Freely.
Fully.

 

Almost A Virgin

A spark of desire,
a whisper of yes.

And when it's over
I don’t feel broken,
I feel whole.
Because this time

it means everything.

 

Doubt

The path is already carved,
stone steps worn smooth by expectations.
I place my foot down —
the earth feels firm.

The wind pulls at my cap and gown.
Applause echoes in the distance,
a chorus of nodding heads.
Smiles float like paper lanterns
strung all around me.

This is what was planned,
what was promised,
what they saw in me
long before I saw myself.

But something inside whispers doubt,
my tongue tastes of iron and regret,
and I wonder —

if I turned, if I ran,
would the world shatter?

Or would I finally
be able to breathe?

 

Seventh Grade Yearbook Photo

The girl with the lopsided grin,
hair parted just so,
eyes wide the way they teach girls
to look pretty in photographs.

No one knew
she was underwater.
She learned
how to hold her breath.
How to smile and laugh
without making a ripple.

No one asked
why she drifted through hallways
like someone lost at sea,
why she stared out windows
as if they were portholes
to another life.

She wore borrowed joy
like a life jacket,
brightly colored,
but never strong enough
to save her.

Only now can I see
the drowning girl
behind her eyes —

how well she learned
to make survival
look like grace.

 

Spelunking MIT's Underbelly

Beneath the Infinite,
the Institute unfolds in shadows;
pipes clatter like distant footsteps,
steam hisses in coded messages
that drift like forgotten blueprints.

We enter through a service hatch,
no map, only the thrill of descent,
where mysteries unfold underground.

Graffiti blooms
in flashlight flicker –
dates, crude drawings,
a strange equation scrawled
in glow-in-the-dark paint.

Each turn a question mark,
each grate a riddle.
We search not for treasure,
but for the thrill of unseen pathways,
the rumor of a sub-basement
beneath the sub-basement.

Down here,
MIT breathes in concrete and cables,
and we follow its whispers
down Corridors of the Infinite.

 

It Wasn't Your Fault

You were young,
trying to build us a life
out of broken beams.

He did what monsters do.
You didn’t see the wolf
behind his easy smile.
No one ever does.

Storms come,
even to mothers
who pray.

But you've carried this burden
far too long.
Put it down.

I grew up anyway.
It shaped who I became.
And you helped me build a life
I wouldn't trade
for anything.

I love you.

 

The Lingering Echo of Sirens

The man in the pickup truck
says he didn't see her;
didn't hear the breathless shout.
Just a thud.
Then silence.

Her mother runs out, barefoot,
leaving the stove on.
She kneels beside the girl
as if praying for time to reverse.

Grief pours into plastic flowers and teddy bears,
balloons losing air, tied to a chain-link fence.
I walk past it every day, the same spot
where she sold lemonade last summer.

There are still toys in the yard.
A pink bike lies on its side, a Barbie doll
in a faded blue dress waits in the basket
for a ride that won't come.

The news truck is long gone,
chalk outline washed off in the rain,
but the sirens still echo.

And a family is left
with an empty space
shaped like a little girl.

Her name was Maddie.

 

YOU

The night you stumbled upstairs
smelling of sweat and gin,
and mom confronted you — about me —
I hid behind my bedroom door
listening to your lies.

You,
with your gravel voice,
shouting at the walls
as if I  had wronged you.
As if I had any say.

Mom once told me
anger moves through blood like smoke,
it fills your lungs and suffocates you.

So here I am,
spitting you out
in every breath,
fighting to forget.

Still,
some nights I wake
with your fingers
penetrating my dreams,
your betrayal a knife
I still carry in my womb.

And I want to forgive,
I do.
But forgiveness is a door
with no handle, not from this side.
I have nothing left to say to you.

So I write.
I walk.
I speak in the voice
you took from me.

And that's the best I can do
to move past you
for now.

 

What Hurts The Most

You turned trust into
something I can't hold.

You bent my compass
into a question mark,
so it never points
to a safe place.

Of all the things you broke,
that's the one I still
can't forgive you for.

 

Only This Moment

 
You make me coffee
in my favorite blue cup.
One sugar, no cream,
spoon still in it.
And I feel known.

You sit beside me,
flash your crooked smile
at my mismatched socks,
my sleep-smashed hair.

The cat waits at his bowl,
patient, as if he knows
some moments are bigger
than cat food.

There's no story here.
Just coffee,
your hand on my shoulder,
and a morning
that doesn't rush to end.

 

Unfamiliar

The mirror holds the face
of a girl I don't know.

Not quite a stranger,
but an old friend
who's been away
for too long.

Her eyes hold serenity,
like the ocean after a storm —
waves no longer raging,
but moving with purpose.

She lifts a hand to her cheek
as if trying to discern
which one of us is real.

We both know she's found something
in a place I'm too scared to look,
but silence is easier
than saying it out loud.

 

A Mother's Road

She came back,
like springtime in a city,
flowers sprouting
through cracked pavement.

Her voice,
her hands,
Once tangled in pills,
grew steady.
Held on.
Held me.

She never told me much about it,
just laid bricks beneath her feet
and walked forward,
built a new path,
day after day,
like she meant it.

She wasn't perfect,
didn't need to be.
Just real.
There.

And when the world fell
out from under me,
she held it up.

She still carries the guilt
like an anchor around her neck,
but when I needed her
she gave it all.

It was enough.

 

Recaptured Innocence

I run barefoot through the field,
wild, laughing, free;
flowers in my hair,
dress blowing in the wind,
dancing to the music of sunlight.

And for just a moment,
I'm a child again.

Held Together By Ink

The storm inside doesn't care
if I sleep, or eat, or breathe;
it only wants out — wants shape,
sound, a voice.

So I write.
I turn thunder into ink,
torrents into syllables
that drip softly onto paper.

Words come wild —
sometimes brutal,
sometimes gentle,
always necessary.

I trap the storm
in stanzas and paragraphs,
bind its fury in raging ink,
while I go on breathing
through a pen, just to keep
from drowning.

 

Just a Matter of Time

I never saw the blood in the bathtub,
only the scars left behind.

Forgive and forget, they told her
as if she'd volunteered for this,
as if healing were the polite thing
to do for everyone involved.

They told her to hush,
Don't make it harder for the family.
As if her silence was a favor owed
to the uncle who split her in two.

She carried all of it
until she couldn't —
bruises her mind wouldn’t bury.
Her body, her voice, her heart
couldn't reclaim what was taken
by force in her own bed.

She bled until the world slipped sideways,
woke later in a room with gray walls,
just another failure.

And the sound of a clock ticking.


--

For my friend Anna (March 4, 2004 — December 22, 2024)

 

Gratitude

Thank You for this life.

For every step that broke me —
for nights I thought You'd gone,
and dawns that proved me wrong.

For the pain and for the healing,
that shaped my poems into prayers.

You carried me through fire,
and in stillness I found grace.

For all that You are,
and all that You've made me —

Thank You.

 

Wolves

Their kindness is a costume
stitched from smiles,
decorated with charm
and pressed smooth,
like a Sunday shirt.

A practiced laugh,
a bedtime story.

They live in plain sight —
the neighbor with warm cookies,
the uncle who brings gifts,
coach, teacher, friend.

You never see
the teeth and claws
until they're tearing
you apart.

 

Unfrozen

Like tulips in winter
dormant beneath the snow,
frozen in time awaiting
the sun's life-giving warmth.

And here, even where shadows still loom,
desire stirs like roots in thawing earth,
quiet, insistent, reaching toward light.

The impossible spring of wanting,
in a garden once burned.

 

Schrödinger

He curls like a question mark
against the hollow of my ribs,
soft punctuation to my silence.

Listens without tilting the world,
just eyes that whisper
yes, my friend, I hear you.

No platitudes, no advice,
just the warmth of a small, steady heart
pressed against my breaking one,
his soft purr bridging
what words can't say.

The weight of the world feels lighter
when I share it with someone
who doesn't ask why.

 

Relearning

You kiss the back of my neck,
and I tense.

You feel it, pause,
but say nothing,
just sit beside me.

I hate that it still happens.
That he still happens.
That after all this time
his shadow can still fall
between us.

I'm sorry.

You take my hand,
hold it
like something fragile
but worth keeping.

I melt into your shoulder
and cry.

Thank you
for loving me anyway.

 

Get Over It

Shouldn’t you be over it by now?

She says it out loud.

It isn't the question that hurts,
but the ease in her voice,
the way she looks at me
as if scars have an expiration date.

Her closeness.
Her not-knowing.

How far away love can feel
when it asks the wrong thing.

 

A Starring Role In Nightmares

You were never asked to take the stage
but there you are, stealing the show.
Night after night, my subordinate role,
a fluttering, burning moth in your spotlight.

Producer, director, and star
of every nightmare, every night,
fear tailored in familiar costumes,
posing behind flats of painted lies.

You haven't aged,
the scenes the same,
the way you loom,
the way my name
spills from your mouth,
dissolves into something
no longer mine.

When morning breaks,
the curtain falls.

I walk offstage
past your name
on a crumpled playbill.

Whole again.