I Said Nothing and Lost Everything

This book was written because I didn't die when I thought I would, and now I have to live with that.My father was taken by gun violence, alive one moment, gone the next.

I lost a cousin who felt like a brother, and with him went whatever hope I had left. Loss follows me. It knows me. It watches. It waits.

I am the glass child, fragile but expected to hold everything, invisible until I break. I learned how to disappear, how to swallow pain, how to survive without ever being held. I grew up in homes where love was conditional, inconsistent, and used as leverage. Where my mother's absence, resentment, or instability carved damage just as deep as her presence. These poems carry the weight of unmet needs, emotional abandonment, and the lifelong hunger that comes from never being properly mothered.

My life is soaked in shame and self-hatred, shaped early and reinforced daily. Every mirror feels like an accusation. I move through the world feeling wrong, too much, not enough, never correct.

These poems carry grief with teeth, rage with nowhere to go, and the unbearable weight of still being here when survival feels like punishment. This book does not offer relief. It does not soften the blow. It does not promise healing. It only tells the truth of living in a body that keeps waking up against its will.