Waiting, Writing, Remembering

The publishing process can feel like a roller coaster. For months, if not years, it’s wait, wait, wait… and then suddenly it’s all systems go. I’m in that in-between space right now — the quiet before the next rush.

While waiting, I stumbled across something unexpected: old poems I had written many years ago, during one of the darkest times in my life. That period — one marked by loving someone addicted to heroin — inspired my first novel, The Silence in the Sound.

It wasn’t all darkness, I should say. There was youth, beauty, insane love and friendship, the fullness of life, and the ache of death. A bit of everything. But those particular poems captured the raw, horrific reality of being tethered to someone else’s addiction.

Reading them transported me back. Feelings I wasn’t prepared for came rushing in. And in that space — revisiting the old wounds and remembering how far I’ve come — I wrote a few more.

And then… ta da.

A new poetry chapbook was born: The Heroin Addict’s Wife.

Yes, it’s dark. But so is life sometimes. It’s raw, real, and honest. And I know I am not alone in this experience. While I am grateful that chapter of my life is far behind me, it still shaped me. It still lives in me. These poems are a way of spilling it all out, of exhaling the heaviness, and of maybe offering a thread of connection to someone else who has lived it too.

If even one reader feels seen in these words, I will be grateful for the camaraderie — and the survival.

Here is one poem from my upcoming chapbook, The Heroin Addict’s Wife:

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NO MATTER

Danger signs glow like lanterns,
and I walk toward the light.
Isn’t that the truth—
that love ignores the warning?

Your skeletons rattle in the dark,
but I cradle them as my own.
Your love is a worn coat,
familiar in its fraying seams,
and familiar feels safe.

My darling, you are a mirror,
reflecting every place I’ve fled.
In sickness, in health,
until death pulls the curtain,
I cannot run from myself.

So I give you my heart—
and we dance,
and we burn,
and you are my drug.

But I am not yours.
Your eyes turn to her
as if she is the only star,
and I am only the dark.

I can’t match her pull,
no matter how I ache,
no matter how I bleed,
no matter how I try.

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Have you ever stumbled across old writing that opened a door back into a version of yourself you thought you’d left behind?