The Light I Kept

This book wasn't born all at once. It was a slow unraveling- a quiet coming home to myself. For so long, I carried stories too heavy to speak. They lived in my skin, in my silence, in the way I kept showing up for everyone but me. When I finally began to write, it was supposed to be for an English assignment. I didn't know it would become a mirror. I didn't know it would save me. Parentless was the hardest to write. Each line reopened a wound that never fully closed. But Body Prayer healed me. It reminded me that softness was never weakness-it was survival. It was my body asking me to stay. These poems became both mirror and medicine- for me, and for anyone who has ever tried to earn love by disappearing. Writing taught me this: Love was never gone. It was just buried beneath the noise. Peace isn't loud. Healing isn't instant. But both are possible. If you've ever doubted it-look at me. We are safe now. We can do this. You can too. And when you reach the end of these pages, I hope you feel what I finally do: calm love. The kind that doesn't ask for permission to exist. The kind that whispers, You are loved.