The Poems

01 The Tenderness You HidA warm meal, a corrected hand. Two truths held apart for years.The House 2025 When the Balance Reached ZeroTwo people keeping two different accounts of the same friendship.Where It Began 02 The Version of Me You RaisedA child learning to clear the evidence from her face.What Remains 2025 The Shape of Your AbsenceFrom the Archive 03 Nothing Is Ever Set DownA mortgage notice beside a plate, and the law of motion it revealed.What Was Carried 2025 You Never Saw Me for Who I AmFrom the Archive 04 The Years Between When and WhetherTen years of waiting, and the word that was never the same word.What Was Believed 2025 Guilt, and What It Left BehindFrom the Archive 05 So They Could Remain ChildrenThe house was clean by morning. Someone had to be awake.What Was Carried 2024 The Love That Turned Me Toward the HorizonFrom the Archive 06 My Side of the BargainThree cards turned over, and a contract life never signed.What Was Believed 2024 The Shape of My BecomingFrom the Archive 07 The Physics of StayingKeys in a bowl. What attraction introduces and attention keeps.What Remains 2024 Your Heart Will Live Outside of YouFrom the Archive 08 The Distance Between Check-InsA call that needs no rebuilding, after months of silence.What Remains 09 In CirculationA drawer, a second plate, and a renewal that kept arriving instead of an answer.Newly accessioned 10 Black SheepA name learned in rooms we shared, and the exhibits she supplied herself.What Was Carried 11 Before the Sky DarkenedA search for the hour it ended, and an eclipse that had already begun.What Was Believed 12 As Close As You AskAn open palm turned upward, and the difference between catching and choosing.The House 13 The Language of DisappearanceThe central injury in this poem is not simply that someone left.Newly accessioned 14 In the Blink of an EyeThe days of early motherhood can feel endless until, suddenly, a child begins to move beyond the arms that once held them.Newly accessioned 15 The Favor Became the ArrangementAn answered call becomes a calendar filled with other people’s needs.Newly accessioned