©ESR 2025

⚠️**Content Advisory** Slight hint at childhood neglect and abuse

Poem 1

I want to tell you
I loved you,
even when you didn’t love me
the way a mother should.

Even when your voice
came slurred through cigarette smoke
and regret.
Even when your hand
only reached for me
to pull me back into silence.

You said I ruined your life—
more than once.
As if I asked to be born
into your unraveling.

You brought men into our home
who looked at me
the way shadows look at doorways.

And I learned early
how to hold my breath
longer than most girls should ever have to.

You were both storm
and sanctuary,
and I still haven’t figured out
how to grieve someone
who hurt me
and shaped me
and made me flinch
at my own reflection.

But I carry your voice
in my bones.
I carry your sorrow
like second skin.

And despite it all—
I still ache for the version of you
I only ever met
in my dreams.

⸻

Poem II – “The Healing Comes in Pieces”

It doesn’t come all at once.

Healing is slow,
quiet,
an unraveling of ghosts.

I used to think
forgiveness meant letting you off the hook.
But now I think
it just means
letting me breathe again.

I say your name
in rooms without anger now.
I tell my story
without setting fire to it.

You are still the wound
But I am the one
who gets to choose
whether to let it bleed
or bandage it in poems.

You may never have said sorry—
but I have,
to myself,
over and over
for carrying the shame
that was never mine to bear.

I don’t need your apology anymore.
I need peace.
And today,
just for a moment,
I found it.