Tag: trauma and healing
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Swimming Lessons
Swimming Lessons emerged from a personal ritual of return—three encounters with water that marked my transformation from child to survivor. The poem is structured as a triptych: saltwater initiation, oceanic communion, and chlorinated reckoning. Each stanza ritualizes memory, surrender, and survival. I wanted to explore how water remembers us, how it becomes a witness to…
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I Will Not Go to the Light Having Known Nothing of the Darkness
I wanted to write a poem that metabolized silence, that honored the gestures we inherit but never name. The title came first—a vow not to bypass darkness in pursuit of light. From there, each stanza became a vessel: bruised fruit, a crocheted blanket, a drawer that won’t close. I wrote it to preserve what frays.