Step Inside The Shape of Healing
This is more than poetry—it’s a map of becoming.
In The Shape of Healing, each poem traces the quiet, powerful journey of recovery, self-acceptance, and resilience. These two poems—Velvet Silence and The Shape of Healing—bookend the collection, offering a glimpse into where the journey begins and how it transforms.
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Whether you’re navigating your own healing or simply craving words that meet you where you are, these pieces are here to sit beside you. Honest. Unpolished. True.
Take a breath. Take a moment. Begin here.
Velvet Silence
In the dream,
there’s a table that never ends—
floating in a room
without walls,
without windows,
without time.
The plates fill themselves
with shimmering things—
golden crusts, velvet creams,
foods that glow
like memory,like longing with a taste.
I reach without reaching.
My hands are clouds.
My mouth forgets
it was ever full.
A voice hums lullabies
in syrup tones,sweet as forgiveness,
sharp as shame.
It calls me by names
I don’t remember giving,
but I answer
all the same.
Each bite is a door—
opening inward
into rooms of silence,
rooms where feelings
sit cross-legged on the floor
and refuse to speak.
I float, I feed,
I vanish—
a ghost dining with ghosts,
desperate to be filled
but never quite whole.
And when it ends,(if it ends),
I wake in the hush,
the table gone,
the hunger still echoing
like a dream
I almost remember—
and almost understand.
The Shape of Healing
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It isn’t a straight line.
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It isn’t neat or symmetrical.
It isn’t a staircase you climb
one perfect step at a time.
Healing looks more like a map drawn blind—
crooked lines, sharp detours,
places where I doubled back
thinking I was lost,
only to find I was learning to stay.
It’s the shape of breath held too long,
then finally released.
The shape of prayers whispered
through cracked lips
on nights when surrender was the only strength left.
It’s the outline of scars
woven into skin
that still remembers how to stretch toward light.
Healing isn’t polished.
It isn’t clean.
It’s stitched with clumsy hands,
washed in stubborn tears,
held together by threads of faith
stronger than they look.
It’s laughter that bubbles up in the middle of grief,
the kind word I finally believe,
the messy mornings filled with barking dogs
and unmade plans.
The shape of healing
isn’t something you can trace once and be done.
It grows.
It stumbles.
It rebuilds itself inside of me,
every single day.
And somehow—
even through the cracks,
even through the chaos—
it holds.
It holds.
And so do I.
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