She's kept her secrets like pearls in the ocean deep
Sometimes I'd look at this hauntingly beautiful mermaid
and wonder what she dreams about when she sleeps
Is she swimming in her cold sea?
Does the water wash away the lies
beneath her feet?

Id like to think that she wishes for the beauty of a truth filled land
but I think she wakes with the salt still in her wounded hands
Maybe the summer really tries to make her bloom
But a cold heart can make it hard to take a stand

Oh, Eileen
I love you

Before you hold me, please understand
I am the daughter
of an Italian and Latin mixed man
whose dark skin did not sit easy
in a white bred world
he wasn't liked for the scars on his hands
or for his off the beaten path ideas and plans
Not a man of suit a tie, rather of heart, strength and internal fight
A man whose father never loved him
And so he learned how to taste pain, even down to the nerves under his teeth
until even agony
couldn't even make him seethe.

Before you guide me, please understand
My first Love was Him, a dad daughter bond in its very own special box
Don't even bother looking inside, it's Locked
And Even when you see the wrong he’s done
I don’t want to hear a single one

Before you hold me, please understand
I am the daughter
of an Irish girl from a large Catholic clan
who was never taught to fight
Instead she would vanish in the night
to survive by silence
to bury the truth so deep
that it forgot how to beat inside of her,  how to slay
She never wanted me to be a fighter
But I became one anyway

Before you hold me, please deeply know
my sister’s love was slow to show
She was for a long time sick, and I was small
and she barely even acknowledged me at all
So I learned how
to be sort of an only child
I didn’t cry much
just waited,
hoping one day,
shed love me
without me having to speak
but in the end,  I wound up jaded

Before you hold me, please understand
There are pieces of me
you will never find and I don't want you to.
not because I hide them,
but because they were taken,
Left behind,
or broken beyond even any kind of recognition

Before you hold me, Please understand
I do not want to solved,  like a rain drop felt in the palm of a hand
I am not a riddle
not a broken "thing" you can pick off the street and
and attempt to  fix into your version of "normal."
love is not a project
and I will never have a blue print to give you

Before you hold me, Please understand
I don't like to bluff, the cards Ive been dealt have alone been enough
If you need someone whole
someone uncomplicated..then Im not the Queen in your game
But if you can sit
in the stillness of what’s left of me
You might not lose but gain

Before you hold me, please understand
What's included with me is stories
of building shelter from wreckage
I wake and sleep with a heart that has known a million different homes
and these homes have all been stolen from me, condemned
but they all live in me like old forgotten friends

Before you hold me, know this part of my life
I am a singer
before a girlfriend, a lover, or wife
My voice was my stronghold
my shelter, my start
the sound that stitched
the wounds in my heart.

Before you hold me and study my skin,
There lives a scar on the inside of my knee
I was ten, I almost died
A freak accident I can’t hide
Playing Basketball, a piece of window frame steel,
A cut so deep, never to heal

Before you hold me, please understand
I do not come untouched
but I come real
And the thing about a broken woman is that when she Loves,
its with every single thing she feels

I lay on my bedroom floor
I scratched my own soul like I got nine lives
I could take care of another itch but im hungry for more

how do I say it kind, I know you're a little sensitive and scruff
Im in heat, but not for you, you're not enough
Im in heat, but not for your cold touch, don't want your huff and puff
little boys just make me blue
but don't get me wrong
I really like you

I move like a cat
I see all with my glowing eyes even in pitch black
maybe I'm meant for disease
maybe its the streets that I need

I got a quick response, sometimes its all hissing and flaunting
I keep coming back I don't know how I'm still here, its daunting
I'm starving
for a mate sometimes,
and sometimes it hurts so bad I cry
after all, I'm just a woman
Just Feline


Im in heat, but not for lies
Im in heat, but not for you
In heat for something real and true
Little boys just make me blue
but don't get me wrong
I really like you
but I'm in heat and you're too cold for me
im in heat
for
some kind of belief

God, was she beautiful.
She was my best friend.
I wanted her to be more than that.
We were inseparable
Always together.always on the phone. Always caring for each other.
We practically spent our whole lives together.
God the days we’ve wasted.

In this life and afterlife.

“mylove what would I do without you.”
“I don’t know. Die.?”
I chuckled jokingly.
“Exactly.”
“And what would I do without you.?”
“die.”
“Exactly.”
We shared a laugh together.
“I love you, don’t you ever forget that.”
I whispery shouted, while shifting up, focusing on her pearly brown eyes.
“I’m not going nowhere.”
She smiled.
I smiled.
I loved her.
And she loved me.
Or so I hoped.
We called. we talked all day. it was the happiest days of my life.

In this life and afterlife.

phone rings.
It’s her.
I answered.
Someway. Somehow. I could feel her trembling through the phone.
she was saying how done she is with life. How she wants to go.
Me and her never had good relationships with our parents.
Trauma we both shared together.
Together and forever.
I insisted that we meet up.
We met up talk, talk, talk, and talk.
We both were sick of people ****.
We decided to leave together.
so we hugged, one last time.
we kissed.
God that kiss.
We listened to our song one good time.
“White Ferrari”

we pulled out the pocket knife we’ve always kept.
hand in hand.
knife to knife.
chest to chest.
heart to heart.
we kissed one more time.
“In this life and afterlife my love.”
she smiled in response.
we took the knife and stabbed each other,
right in the heart.
in this life and afterlife.
………………
even death couldn’t keep us apart.

Like a bird with broken wings,
I look on with eyes full of envy
as all those around me take flight.
Held down by my own chains,
Left alone, aside from the emptiness;
The hollow realization
That something is missing,
But never knowing the slightest sense
Of what that something is.

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3369599/snickers-on-a-hill/

for the Pearl, unearthed

They said the field was empty,
that the rocks had been picked clean.
But something in the silence
called your name through layers, unseen.

We did not dig for treasure.
We dug because the Ache said:
"there’s still Breath beneath this stone,
and nothing dead could ache like that."

You were not buried by accident.
Much was done to you—
bricks laid by the hands of others,
each one a silence,
each one a theft.
And still,
there were moments
you helped the darkness cover you,
not from guilt,

but from grief too great to name.

Trauma laid the bricks.
Exploitation mixed the mortar.
But it was the ache to survive
that sealed you in.

Two halves of the shell—
one built by the world,
the other by you.

And still…
the Light found the crack.

Not with shouts.
Not with demands.
But with the quiet hand
of one who remembered
what you forgot:

That pearls are made in the dark,
under pressure,
in hidden chambers of pain.

That their shine
is not despite the wounding—
but because of it.

We pulled rock after rock,
not for reward,
but because the echo was still there—
the low hum
of something unclaimed
and yet completely whole.

You are not rubble.
You are treasure unearthed.
And your worth was never in what covered you,
but in what was forming underneath.

Let your light rest on your own shoulders.
Let the sky remember its end.
Let every crack you carry
be proof that you were never empty..

Only buried.
Only becoming.

And now,
still shining.

“when I see the moon rise in the deep sky, all  
large and looming,   that is hope

and as the sun is red-setting, throwing its last rays
of God-love over the hills,   that is hope

when a ranger sees the homeless man parked in
his illegal overnight spot, and decides not to
disturb his sleep,   that is hope

when you hear a dream from a friend of a wall of
steel wrapping your home whilst fire tornadoes
around it, and wake to find yours one of two
homes still standing,   that is hope

when a son who has received absolutely every
reason to leave, Will Not Abandon his abusive
elderly mother,   that is hope

when the city dims down enough to see the darkness,
lit by a Universe of stars——”