Some of us were raised by silence.
Others by hands that only knew how to take.
These are the poems that trace the edge of belonging—
where love meant rules, and survival meant stepping outside the gate.
Black Sheep in the Garden of Order
Not every smile means safety.
I live outside the fence.
Not by rebellion,
but because I’ve seen what happens behind the curtains.
I’ve felt evil’s fingers
trace their way down my spine—
blood or not.
Family means nothing
when cruelty shares your name.
Silence makes any house a trap.
I learned early—
not every smile means safety.
Not every blood tie means kin.
They say I’m the problem.
I say I won’t pretend.
They say I left—
I say I was thrown.
Politeness hides the blade.
Smiles cut deeper than knives.
I’ve watched silence win.
Let me be the black sheep—
awake.
I won’t be the lamb
led to the wolves dressed in linen.
I know what silence costs.
I paid it in full.
Now I protect—
so others don’t think they’re insane for remembering.
I wear exile like a badge.
No one gets to name me but me.
I reclaim my body
one breath at a time.
This is not bitterness.
It’s clarity.
Why do you need so much attention, Miss Underwood
I learned rhythm from the clatter of keys and the things she didn’t say.
In the days before the end of lovelyladylesslullabys…
Before the rappingrapturetapping of rhythmic feline coos to docile—ghostly—delight.
Before green dawns rose in ink-pressed tears, and questions whispered themselves by candlelight at the edges of midnight.
Before the roustabout arguments, circling like devils in eidetic eidos— and before the bite. The bite that made Before into After.
When poison poured— poured through blood, through pores, through sweat and sleep—
Dreaming aromatic phantoms of dirty poems typed into being.
Before men were boys. And happy thoughts could make us fly.
When selfish Sundays bathed us in sunlight.
Crabapples. Puddle-jumping. Sore bellies. No regrets.
When wars were fought with stick guns and sound effects— “Hey! I got you!”—
And streetlights called us home.
And answers came wrapped in poems, folded into the spine of Where the Sidewalk Ends.
But now— After.
Wars still rage with invisible bullets.
Launched by foreign powers and bad economic plans.
And now—
Suitors arrive as soft-lit ghosts, shaped by algorithms and glossy profiles—
taglined defenders of anti-existential prowess, selling hollow hope in lonely rooms lit only by the dim blue glow.
And now, Miss Underwood—
your oily tears, dried by soft fingertip touches—
are the price I pay for being saved from that glow
Orchard at Dusk
The trees remembered things we were told to forget.
Herons beat the dusk—
wind stirs smoke through twisted boughs,
fruit softens unseen.
Juniper ghosts hum,
ripe secrets ferment below—
red leaves catch the dark.
Cypress breath exhales,
wild berries cling to silence,
a duck calls, then none.
Knife whispers through skin—
citrus and cold smoke rising,
sweet molasses dusk.
Pear and beet green bow,
shiso dreams in ginger rain—
echoes on the tongue.