“There were things she never named, only folded like laundry too wrinkled to iron smooth. I grew up watching her close windows before the wind came. Grief, she believed, should never be given an open door. She never raised her voice, but the quiet she wore had weight. It pressed against the walls.” LoveMotherPoetryLossGriefHealingSilenceSadLongingHearbreak Book:A Shelf of Things I Never Said Source: A Shelf of Things I Never Said
“There’s a bobby pin, two receipts, and my mother’s voice trapped in a voicemail I haven’t had the courage to delete. my lipstick sits there too the one I wore the day I didn’t cry. No one asks why I keep a drawer full of matchboxes and apology notes. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I trace the ring mark left by an old mug and imagine it’s a constellation. I tell myself the bedside table is not clutter it’s just the only place I keep remembering to live. Some days, I organize it. Most days, it organizes me.” LoveDeathMotherPoetryLossGriefHealingSadLongingHearbreak Book:A Shelf of Things I Never Said Source: A Shelf of Things I Never Said
“I used to think I was different. But I trace her storms in the way I love always bracing for ruin, always sleeping with the lights off, as if that’s how you keep the house from burning. I started having dreams in her accent. Started pausing before I spoke, like her. Started carrying umbrellas even when the sky looked clear. I mistook her quiet for peace. It was survival. A hush that had teeth. Now, when I cry, it rains in my daughter’s room. The wallpaper peels in the same corner it did in mine.” LoveMotherPoetryLossGriefHealingSadDaughterLongingHearbreak Book:A Shelf of Things I Never Said Source: A Shelf of Things I Never Said