All my life,
you said what you said.
I did what you said.

I wore full-sleeved clothes.
I stayed quiet.
My cries went into vacuum—
swallowed, silent.

But you always stood strong.
It’s the colour of skin.
The hair you couldn’t tame.
The nose that wasn’t yours.

I always just...
heard what you said
until my ears bled out.

You remind me of the mountains—
the ones I grew up with:
tall, oddly shaped, and proud.
It’s shocking
that my tears made you crumble,
like a lost girl at sea.

Glad to see,
the past haunts you
like it does me.

He inherited the tightly folded linens,
starched corners, brittle creases,
bleached until they could no longer recall
every harsh argument around the table
that held them.
Every hem had been stitched shut with silence.
Every stain scrubbed until the blood
resembled rust
and flaked away.
I run my fingers along the monogram,
stitched by hands that had swallowed their own fire,
and marvel at the paradox;
how simmering anger can still
make something so delicate.
She embroidered flowers
no one ever named,
roots turned sharp by willful ignorance.
white thread
on white cotton
"elegant" defiance.
You had to tilt it toward the sun
just to see the blooms.
He told me how on Sundays
she laid it on the table,
a weekly treaty,
a wound she dared anyone to set a plate on.
They never noticed, too busy carving the meat.
The white flag was already folded.
The surrender came with matching napkins.
Now he keeps it in a box
lined with cedar
and the scream he keeps folded beneath it.
I tell him:
use them
or burn them,
but never pretend they were clean.

I yelled back when I was younger,
screamed while I cried,
maybe I didn't understand,
but I knew it wasn't right.

I fought back when she wouldn't,
she’d go to bed and hide.
His power over little kids
was his only source of pride.

Not me, though, I never gave in.
I talked right back at every whim.
Sometimes I’d even instigate,
if it saved my sister a violent fate.

Shut up now, sit down.
Be a good girl and make us proud.
Your grades are falling? How can that be?
Put your sister in the tub,
It’s my house, and I’m the King.
You never listen, that’s why you can’t go out.
You have friends? With your attitude? That I doubt.

Nothing got past me when I was a child,
Mouth of a martyr who oddly went quiet.
And I’m not really sure when that happened to me.
The defiance has died,
Now I sit at their feet.

"He’s not a bad man, he’s misunderstood.
His life was hard, he’s finding his way.
It wouldn’t be very supportive if I didn’t stay! I know it looks bad but it's really okay."

I went from loud-mouthed, defiant, and strong,
To caring about eggshells disturbed by my wrongs.

A sea of silent people with
Zippers instead of lip and teeth
So long it’s been since they’ve unzipped
They calcified like coral reef
And sometimes it is hard to breathe
When your captor is a feeling.
Their words are knives stuck in their sheathes,
At nightfall, they dream of screaming.

Their shoulders slumped, they knew that if
They sang or sighed or gave a speech
Before it was too late, their scythe
Would never have to reap and reap
And reap, but no, they sowed the seed,
If only they’d been believing
But they dug a grave, where they sleep
At nightfall, to dream of screaming.

Their kids don’t cry, instead, they writhe
Inheriting their voiceless grief
No words to soothe the kind of life
That never, ever knows relief
As it was stolen by a thief
And his name is Never Needing.
Their fear, it thrums to its own beat
At nightfall, they dream of screaming.

They waste away, they cannot eat
But now, death itself is freeing.
Their dreams once were the sun and sea—
Tonight, they just dream of screaming.

I am the apple that fell off the family tree.
They say I don't fall far,
and its true.
Its impossible to completely rid of my roots.
But I still have the power to do what those stiff branches were too stubborn and fixed to:

Grow.
Grow from their flaws and generational hurt.
Plant the seed of healing which will grow with the generations to come into a new tree with deeper roots and riper fruit.

It hurts to detach myself from my history,
But it would hurt more to put my children through the same pain.

brain signals for blood:
a freight of the past revs to life;
generational curses come on board the ride
with their hefty baggage,
and roughneck IDs;

the nervous conductor lets them on -
offers them a ticket, and sighs -
‘this too shall pass.’