I was not born into silence—

but I learned early how to hold it.

How to carry pain without spilling.

How to vanish parts of myself so others felt more whole.

They taught me how to be small.

I taught myself how to survive.

I do not write for applause.

I write because it keeps me alive.

Because truth withheld is a wound that deepens.

Because the stories they tried to erase are still breathing in my chest.

This space was not built to perform.

It was built to remember— to stitch something sacred from what remains.

To say: you were not wrong to feel this deeply.

To say: your voice belongs.

Even if it shakes.

Even if it’s never been heard before.

I write because living alone isn’t enough. Choices make the shape of a life, but they vanish as soon as they’re made. One decision, one moment, one turn — gone before I can even see what it cost or gave me. Writing is how I hold them still. How I take back time. How I learn what it means to be alive in the middle of everything that wants to erase me.

My poems may feel wild, even feral. That’s because they come from the raw place where language breaks open. They don’t wait to be polite. They bleed out the way they have to. But when I write to you like this, in a letter, it’s different. It’s slower. It’s me reaching out with both hands, saying: this is why I do it.

I don’t write for performance. I don’t write to impress. I don’t even write to escape. I write because what I’ve lived doesn’t settle inside me until it’s written. And when it’s written, it doesn’t belong only to me anymore. It belongs to you too.

That’s what I want. For my words to meet you where you are. For my life — messy, imperfect, unfinished — to move through your skin and settle somewhere deeper. My writing is how a life is not just lived, but felt in the marrow of another human being.

That’s all I’m chasing. Not polish. Not perfection. Just truth. Words with blood still in them. Words that keep breathing after I’m gone.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for carrying them with you. Thank you for letting them matter.

With marrow-deep honesty,
- Jody