Where I Wasn’t Raised
Some places teach you to listen for danger before it arrives. You learn to make yourself small enough to stay unseen. What begins as survival eventually starts to look like personality.
They say
home is where you’re shaped.
But mine
was where I shrank.
Where the cupboards held
more silence than food.
Where I learned
to pour cereal
without waking a storm.
No one taught me
how to tie my shoes,
but I knew
how to decode the sound
of keys in a lock
like a warning.
I didn’t grow up
in a house.
I grew up
in the pause
between return
and regret.
In the quiet
between footsteps
that should’ve come
and didn’t.
Every wall
held a memory
I wasn’t allowed
to speak aloud—
the kind you carry in your spine,
long after you stop calling it pain.
Every door
closed fine.
No slamming required.
Just the soft click
of another moment
you weren’t worth staying for.
I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for order now. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.
Thanks for staying till the end.
Most people don’t.
I notice it every time someone makes it this far. Through the noise, through the pain, through the part that asks for honesty instead of comfort. I don’t take it for granted.
Your presence keeps this alive.
If you ever want to go deeper, beyond the bruise, into what still moves underneath, the doors are open below. Every poem, every sound, every small act of support helps the work keep breathing in the dark.
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