The armor grew from the soft places that needed protecting. It did its job. It got me here. A poetry collection on the quills we grow to survive, and the softness that outlasts them.
Buy on AmazonDo not mistake my stillness
for an open door.
I have been quiet before,
the quiet of a woman
learning which rooms
will actually hold her,
after finding out
the hard way
that even the ones
who share your blood
can decide
you no longer belong
in theirs.
Every quill along my back
was once a bare, believing thing
that reached for a hand
and found an accusation instead,
that reached for a father
and found a closed door
with his voice still
on the other side of it.
I did not choose this coat.
I grew it the way scar tissue grows,
exactly where I was touched
and did not survive the touching
unchanged.
So come close if you are patient.
The soft thing is still in here.
It survived a war
most people never saw.
It is still,
somehow,
willing
to let you in.