I often feel as though
My childhood scarred me-
Marred me, knocked me down,
Emblazoned insecurity in scarlet
Upon my fore brow;
“Damaged.” “Unworthy.” “Trash.”

Not meant to succeed.
She does not belong.
Hidden behind a mask of perfection
Desperate to cover angry letters,
Scrawled in crimson, tender, raw.

The woman and the girl
are one in the same

She finds joy in wall rainbows,
And loves the rain

She makes crockery
Imprinted with dinosaurs,
She likes shopping at thrift stores
For clothing that screams whimsy -

Beaded necklaces,
dark velvet
And cute embroidery

Videogames
With quests primeval,
And moral threads
That aren’t so medieval

They whisper,
“There’s more to the journey
than simply good vs evil.”

                        
                                              The void still exists -
                                                  That gaping abyss

                                                           Cold as glass,
                                                         But weightless

                                              It does not pull now
                           She can stare all she likes now
                              It's all but a fascinating sight

                                              There is no question
                                                     Whether to stay,
                                                                     Or to go

                        Eleven was such a long time ago

You are not my daughter—
you are the daughter
of his late brother.

But everyone used to say
you looked like me,
that you could have easily
been mine.

And that was fine.
I called you princess,
because you are.

I don’t know
when you will realize this,
but the place you’re growing up in
is a hard one.

I won’t say I miss you,
but I wonder—
do you ever miss me?

Because in the few moments
we shared,
you clung to me,
you painted my face,
brushed my hair,
and for a while—
I became a princess
in your kingdom.

I hope the little time we had
was enough to show you
there is more to life.

Never stop dreaming, Nic.
You can go far.
All it takes
is believing.

The baskets spill, the piles are high,
unfolded truths that will not lie.
A basement door is pressed and bound,
with secrets clothed but never found.

I sort the fabric, piece by piece,
for some bring pain, and some bring peace.
The child I was still leaves her mark,
a tender seam, a hidden spark.

The mother’s cold, the lineage torn,
old stains of those who came before.
Yet in my hands I choose what stays,
what must be washed, what I’ll erase.

Each folded shirt, each garment worn,
a burden shed, a self reborn.
And through this work I come to see:
not every thread belongs to me.

I was never addicted.
I was always starved for affection—
That pleasure I tried to find
Here, in my core,
Was only an attempt to rescue
The girl in her old bed
In that house filled with
Violence,
Neglect.

Where no one ever told her a story
Before she fell asleep,
Where no one ever said
“Good night,
Sleep with God.”

Today,
She’s feeling her way along the walls
Of her cold house,
Trying to find
The path back home.

—It was always about
Feeling loved.

There is a goddess in me—
long asleep.

She woke.
I fed her.
I listened to her voice.
She sang the most beautiful songs to me.

But then I put her back to sleep
and forgot her.

Now she has awakened again,
and she sees—
if it were up to me,
nothing would change.

I believe this goddess
is the lost child within me,
braver than I am,
pushing me toward the choices
I was so afraid to make.

Living
was one of them.