Baywater

Baywater is a deeply introspective collection of contemporary poetry that confronts the quiet wars we fight within ourselves. Structured in three unfolding movements, the book traces a journey through fear, grief, generational pain, attachment, identity, and ultimately, self-reckoning.

Written originally at fifteen and later revised and republished at twenty, Baywater captures the raw immediacy of adolescence alongside the reflective clarity of early adulthood. The result is a rare dual perspective: a young mind wrestling with suffering in real time, and a maturing voice learning to understand it.

Through fragmented prose, direct address, and confessional intensity, Skylar R. Leisey explores themes of anxiety, self-perception, forgiveness, familial absence, lost love, and the internal dialogue between destruction and transformation. The poems examine the mind as both adversary and teacher - the force that wounds us and the force that ultimately guides us toward growth.

At its core, Baywater is about confronting the lies we tell ourselves, breaking generational cycles, and choosing understanding over violence. It is a meditation on the cost of silence, the burden of memory, and the courage required to remain alive when the mind insists otherwise.

For readers drawn to contemporary confessional poetry, psychological introspection, and philosophical reflection, Baywater offers an unfiltered exploration of what it means to become who you are meant to be.