You began with cold rain,
clouds breaking in slow arcs,
to promise something new
emerging from the brightness.
I practiced holding peace,
cupped in patient palms,
gathered strength
from clear blue afternoons,
found roots in days
that tried to break me.
Goodbye, 2025.
I step beyond your threshold now,
carrying echoes
that shape the path I follow.
In your waning moments,
I smooth your crumpled edges,
and press you gently
between the pages
of the book
of who I'm becoming.
A broken mirror
replays moments,
each one asking
what I missed,
seeking solace
in sharp edges of blame.
Fate stepped in for me;
I tried to pay it forward.
Failure was never an option,
but inevitable.
I still carry her shadow,
her absence feels hollow.
Sometimes I wonder
if I'd stayed with her that night,
could my arms
have kept her here?
But the truth is a tide
that drags me forward,
and I hate it,
even as it keeps me alive.
--
For my dear friend Anna (March 4, 2004 – December 22, 2024)
You learn early
that love wears
a quiet smile,
a gentle voice,
a hand that pretends
to keep you safe.
You learn that trust
is a doorway
people walk through
to take what they want.
You learn that pain
wears familiar clothes,
that betrayal
looks like affection,
that a body can confuse
warning with welcome.
Later, people ask
how you couldn't see it,
how you let it happen,
why you didn't run.
They speak as if the world were simple,
as if the heart of a child
does not cling to the ones it needs
to survive.
Manipulation is patient.
It rewrites the story
of what love means,
until harm feels normal
and safety feels unreachable.
You were not stupid.
You were a child
who trusted.
The failure
was never yours.
Not to raise a child,
but to keep one breathing
at a time she thought
she couldn't anymore.
Seventeen and slipping,
I walked toward endings
as if they were doors
left carelessly open.
But two complete strangers,
at two different hours
of the same unraveling life,
a mother, a minister,
a support group leader,
a counselor, a teacher,
two grandparents,
and one remarkable friend —
they all held space
for the parts of me
I believed unlovable.
It took a village
to keep me here,
to keep me whole enough
to keep trying.
A village of hands,
voices, strangers,
and love I didn't yet
know how to accept.
But I'm still here
because they were.
Some days I feel the pull
of the life I planned.
The long, steady climb
up the ladder of knowledge,
the careful assembly
of logic and research
into the bridge I thought
would carry me forward.
Other days, a softer voice
calls to me, asking me
to sit with someone's hurt,
to offer warmth instead of data,
presence instead of proof.
It beckons with open hands,
quiet and human.
I stand between them,
one foot on the map I drew
years before I knew myself,
one foot on the shifting ground
of who I'm learning I am.
Still not knowing
which one
I'm meant to be.
She could have turned to stone.
No one would have blamed her.
She's seen what breaks a body,
what hollows out a soul.
But somehow
she kept a softness,
a light that never went out.
Her laughter still rings true,
her hands still reach.
It's not that she forgot –
you can see the knowing in her eyes –
but she wears it like weather,
something she's learned to live through.
I don't know how she does it,
how she still believes in kindness
after everything.
But when she smiles,
I feel a small, impossible hope
that gentleness
can survive
anything.
--
For my dear friend K, who has been through it all and still always finds a way to be there for me.
In the barren woods,
morning light gathers
in a clearing touched by fire,
thin as winter sun
through charred branches.
The air smells of ash and rot.
Moss climbs what’s left
of a fallen tree,
quietly covering
what can't be restored.
Sometimes I stop there,
run my hand through the moss
covering its blackened bark,
see my face reflected in the water
pooled inside that hollow trunk,
and wonder how life keeps growing
around all this ruin.
She walked with quiet resignation
through hallowed halls, where whispered deals
and tailored suits cloaked hungry eyes,
a place where innocence was sold
in cold transactions.
She carried truth
like a trembling flame,
raising it to the world
to shine a light
on its darkest places.
They tried to bury her under fear,
under silence, under shame.
They thought they'd locked her down
with money, with threats, with indifference.
But she rose again, voice ragged,
yet bright enough to shatter glass walls.
She bore scars no child ever earned,
cradled them in the night,
shielded them from sight,
each scar a star,
a point of truth
in a sky of lies.
And when grief
became too heavy
for even her courage to carry,
she stepped away from the noise,
into a quiet place she hoped
might bring peace.
I curse the hands that held her down.
I curse the shadows that swallowed her.
I curse the system that let monsters roam free.
But I praise her name.
I praise the girl who survived,
the woman who spoke truth.
I praise the light she gave to others
before hers flickered out.
May peace find her now.
May she rest beyond all echoes of pain.
And may the world she tried to warn
awaken enough to build a system
that could have saved her.
--
Virginia Giuffre's autobiography, Nobody's Girl, is a heartbreaking account of her life and the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and so many others in his circle, and the system that let her down again and again. Before taking her own life in April 2025, she left explicit instructions for her memoir to be published posthumously. I read it through tears, and felt some of what she felt. If you have the stomach for it, read it. As heartbreaking as her story is, there are so many others like her, buried by a system designed to protect the people in power, a system so desperately in need of change.
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...