I’d like to begin this collection with an introduction written by my dear friend Thomas Childs Jr. back in 2010. When I first published these poems in January of that year, I asked Thomas if he would write something for me, and he graciously agreed.

By the end of that same year, I had remarried and returned home, only to receive the devastating news that Thomas had died suddenly of a heart attack. We were both still in our forties. Just weeks earlier, I had spoken to him. It was surreal — like a nightmare I could not accept. Losing Thomas left a hole in me that will never be filled. It’s a wound I keep open, in a way, so that he remains alive inside me.

Below is Thomas’s introduction, exactly as he wrote it.

An Introduction

I first met Bruce nearly twenty years ago.  Looking back, we were both idealistic young men with high hopes for the future and a shared passion for poetry.  Over the years, we got older and lost touch with each other.  However, I feel an affinity with Bruce because even though over the years, we may have gone through trials and tribulations, we have BOTH learned from them.  We may have been beaten down but not defeated.  We have not let our demons that haunted us have the last word…  And one thing I can say about Bruce is that he has channeled all the hurt and pain he experienced into his poetry.   

In the wistful “Dreamlike Visions” and “The Whole Story”, he talks about a hopeful vision of love that is over too soon and the possibilities of what could have been…  but will, instead, never be.  “Tears for Grandmother’s Passing” is a coming to grips with a loss of a loved one.  The collection of Christian poems paints a picture of rediscovered spirituality.  My personal favorite, however, is “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”  In his reflection of that poem, Bruce mentions the poet Anne Sexton’s struggles with depression and psychiatric hospitalization and says “She (Sexton) never made it all the way back.  I am so glad I did.”  That makes two of us, my friend… I CAN relate. 

In conclusion, it is my hope that you enjoy this collection of Bruce Whealton’s poems.  In fact, Bruce, I thank you for asking me to write this introduction.  It was a singular honor to grant your request.  You put your heart and soul for all to see into your writing and we, as readers, are richer for it.   

Wow, I cannot thank my friend enough. 

Addendum

This book is a testament to what really matters.
It holds poems inspired by the people I have loved most deeply — and by the unthinkable pain of losing them.

What are we when we give ourselves fully to another — become one life, one heartbeat — only to have them torn away by death or by forces beyond our control? I know now it wouldn’t have mattered if we had shared a single week or fifty years as husband and wife; the pain of losing that love is exquisitely unique, the most profound wound I have ever known.

The title What Really Matters came from words I once wrote to Lynn. In 2000, my entire life collapsed under the weight of losing my home, my job, and the career I loved as a therapist. But even then, I realized none of it compared to losing her. This collection is my way of saying that — of carving those words into some solitary rock the way a desperate lover might, hoping someone will see.

I think of Don Henley’s song, “New York Minute,” with its haunting lines:

Harry got up,
dressed all in black,
went down to the station,
and he never came back.
...
On some solitary rock,
a desperate lover left his mark:
"Baby, I’ve changed. Please come back."

If I had written that song, I would have told you exactly who Harry was, who the girl was that he loved and who loved him. Because for reasons I can’t fully explain, I want you - my reader, my witness - to know these people. I want you to know Celta Camille Head, the first woman I ever loved, who died so tragically young. I want you to know Lynn Denise Krupey, whose tears of joy when I gave her our engagement ring remain the brightest moment of my life.

This is how I cope. By naming them. By refusing to let them vanish.

There is more to say, always more — stories layered with survivor’s guilt, self-blame, longing, and awe. But it’s a long story. And so, I’ll leave you now with the poems.

Before I met Celta, I was 23 —
out of a childhood of emotional deprivation,
past undergrad where I somehow believed
I was becoming confident —
an extrovert on campus,
but not at parties,
not in groups of more than six,
still too shy to speak in class,
still escaping to the movies alone
on Friday afternoons.

I thought I was becoming someone.
Still, I was mostly surviving.
Still needing to grow.

Then there was her.

She was the first
to see me in a way
that made everything before
feel like a long, dim dream —
a story I try to tell
about life before 23,
but it’s mostly devoid of detail.

It’s not that I have a bad memory.
Some things are still vivid —
like being four years old,
floating in the YMCA pool,
held in someone’s arms,
and feeling certain
I didn’t deserve to be held.

But most of those years
blur together.

Maybe because I hadn’t really begun
to live yet.

Another Place, Another Time, Another Life

We used to walk
hand-in-hand
at the Botanical Gardens —
in Athens, Georgia,
following the paths.

This was my escape,
my other life.

And what I felt
is hard to put into words,
but I can say
that this...
        this sustained me.

(The feelings remained
and echoed throughout the upcoming week) —
until I could see her again
a week later.

We lived in different cities.
I lived with abusive parents —
I suppose I chose this.
I was an adult.

What I felt
            not just holding her hand,
or wrapping my arms around her —
but the way she held me,
chose to be close to me...

 

Perhaps there’s something else
I am leaving out...

Maybe it has something to do
with love.

Her love?
Mine?
Both.

I don’t know...
maybe because I had not known love —
from anyone, at all, ever,
before I was 24.

The Swing

Three of us are walking
in a small field—
the girl I loved,
myself, and her friend,
whom we had come to visit.

We came upon a swing,
and as I remember it,
I am in front of her
pushing her gently—
away, knowing she would return.

It wasn’t the way her hair
was caught in the sunlight
before me,
nor the smooth,
calming, undulating motion
of the swing.

It was what happened
in the quiet that fell—
a pause in time—
when our eyes locked,
and everything else faded
from our awareness.

David’s voice grew distant,
his presence dissolved.
She saw only me.
And I saw only her.

In that moment,
there was no one else.
No labels.
No explanations.
Only knowing.

After so many years—
decades—
I still remember this moment.

That’s what love is.
The kind you feel
in the body,
in the silence,
in the return
of the swing.

Where the Love Was

They said you were an angry woman —
but where was your anger at me?
Could you be so angry at the whole world
but not at me?
Not ever?
(We had only a year.)

I guess that has something to do
with love — our love.
I kept waiting for that anger
to turn on me,
for me to do
something
to provoke it —
yet I only saw
your smiles at me.

That’s where the love was.

And what about the
I love you’ s
we exchanged?
I’d never heard those words
or said them
so many times.
I never felt so moved
to say “I love you”
until then.

That’s where the love was.

Or maybe it was in certain
snapshot memories...
Like that day in the park —
I was telling a story from my past,
not even a remarkable one.
But when I looked up,
your eyes were on me —
captivated, hypnotized,
transfixed.

I still remember it
decades later,
along with so much more.

That’s where the love was.
Or is.

And finally,
it was in all the tears
I shed when I heard you died.
I never cried before that.

The love,
it’s in the memories —
in the knowing
that you are always a part
of me,
and I, a part of you.
There’s comfort in that.

I guess love isn’t
just a place
long ago.

Maybe I really didn’t believe
that someone could love me —
or be so deeply interested
in me.

These days,
or in the past few years,
I seem to have needed something
more
than just a touch
to feel anything as intense.

And most importantly —
it’s not the intensity
that matters,

but the overall mood,
the mindset of the relationship —
that is what matters.

I met Lynn and started seeing her around the 4th of July of 1992. I had been grieving the loss of Celta when I came to Wilmington in April of 1992.

I found love briefly with Celta and yet she died so suddenly and at such a young age. I was devastated. I didn't think I would feel, or experience love again. Then I met Lynn in 1992. We fell madly, and passionately in love. The poems that follow are about that love. I wanted to tell the story to all those who would ever follow me in the later generations about some epic love to rival any husband and wife or any couple.

We lived as husband and wife and were married in every way that mattered. As a Catholic at the time, I sought the sacrament of Holy Matrimony from the Church, but they denied us—the disgusting attitude that someone born with a debilitating illness should be denied access to the sacred! This treatment of Lynn, among many other harmful attitudes, pushed me away from religion.

Lynn was willing to embrace any way of symbolically representing our everlasting devotion, even though she wasn't Christian. We both wanted to formally move from engagement to the next stage of formal commitment to one another forever. Now, no longer religious, I can see that if the sacred exists at all, no secular piece of paper could make our bond more holy than it already was.

For years we had a normal relationship, and the fact that she had a chronic genetic illness did not define our relationship.

Our love created a sense of tranquility and serenity at its core—a deep peace and contentment that existed at all times, even when I was depressed, which was merely a transitory feeling that would pass.

In its purest form, love is distinguished from addiction, which is momentary and transitory. We do not pursue a high that we once had and cannot reach again—that would be like implying that once we discover an awe-inspiring sunrise we need a more beautiful sunrise to feel that same sense of awe.

Love is also like beauty in the sense that it's best experienced as opposed to merely being stated like some universal truth. Creative people express these experiences of awe and wonder in many forms.

These poems capture more than fleeting moments—they hold experiences where physical sensations became markers of something profound, eternal, and awe-inspiring. Each moment contained vastness, pointing to the spiritual that even non-believers in the supernatural can embrace. They are signifiers of what endures and give ultimate meaning to what really matters.

An Infinite Beach

On some beach
that never ends
I'm with her
and just for a moment
I pretend
that things never change
that sometimes,
in moments like this
we walk hand-in-hand
forever.
This is my greatest desire -
to stop time
like this...
when there is just this place,
just these beach sounds
and just
she and I.

What Really Matters

Moments
frozen in time.

That is what love
seems to be...
these moments you remember
something in these moments
(takes my breath away)
has a certain meaning
that endures -

a feeling...
an image...
something said...
or shared...
certain sounds
in the background...
whatever it is that
you remember
is all that really matters.

Introduction: We walked into the Coastline Convention Center that Sunday evening in 1995, hand-in-hand as usual, overlooking the Cape Fear River where the weekly poetry readings were held. Lynn had no idea I had a surprise for her.

We took our seats at a table with other regulars—all friends and acquaintances who knew us as the couple we were, always like newlyweds, never afraid of public displays of affection. The sun was sinking low, and the room was getting slightly dark with just a dim light up front near the podium.

When my time came, I stepped boldly to the microphone. As I read this new poem, I could sense the knowing glances from people in the room—casual looks toward Lynn as everyone understood what was happening. I wonder if she noticed those glances, waiting for her reaction to this declaration of love.

Dreamlike Visions

In this dreamlike vision 
I lay in her lap,
while her golden hair
flows in the gentle wind,
On the beach.

Is this real?
I reach up to touch her
but she is gone... gone... gone
and I am laying on the sand.

Looking skyward I see her
in a vision.
She searches for me,
calling my name, saying,
"I am his and he is mine."

I try to get back
to find her
and that infinite beach
where we would walk hand-in-hand
or lay on the sand
holding each other
together
forever.

The vision -
the dream -
(incomplete)
the love
never ends...
The dream never
ends.

Follow-up to the poem: I sat back down next to Lynn as someone else prepared to read. I noticed she was doodling. One of our mutual friends commented on how much he liked the poem. I turned to Lynn and asked, "So, what do you think?"

"What?" she said, looking up confused. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening."

I shook my head and smiled. She was embarrassed, her face blushing. "I thought you were only reading poems I already heard," she said. "Oh, I'm so sorry sweetie. Let me read it."

I handed her the poem and leaned in close, my arms resting on her chair. I tilted my head and slowly brought my lips to hers. She held my lips there with her hands on both sides of my face—just for a moment, mindful of the others around us.

"It's okay," I said with a smile. "You know what... I really love you."

"I love you too, honey."

She read the poem, visibly moved by this surprise declaration of love.

This became an inside joke for us. I would tease her: "If I share a poem about our love, I hope Lynn is listening?" Her way of making up for it was to read this poem at future poetry events when she didn't have anything else to share. I can't count the number of times that happened, it demonstrated her appreciation and recognition of the value of our love.

I explained that the poem was inspired by the Song of Songs from the Old Testament and a song by the Electric Prunes called "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)." I was drawn to the sensual imagery in both—the biblical celebration of love between two people committed to each other, and the dreamlike quality of the song that captured something both beautiful and haunting about love and longing.

In Love

Some would say they understand 
that it is not that uncommon... 
a word that is overused 
because I can't find another word.

People walking past us 
might have seen us holding hands 
they might have known 
there was love.

Yet they would not understand... 
the miraculous experience 
of her hand in mine 
as we walked by the ocean. 
They would not understand 
the experiences – physical and emotional 
signifiers of something worthy 
of belief.

When we sat side by side 
facing the ocean waves, 
hearing them in the background 
seeing them - 
moved by something unseen - 
our bodies were touching 
and the best analogy for what I experienced 
was electrical signals moving 
at each point where our bodies 
our legs, arms, thighs 
were in contact.

This was not merely something 
physically pleasurable, 
not merely biological 
emotional, chemical.

No, I knew that. 
I have felt passion 
but rarely have I felt 
love – though I have been 
mistaken more times than I can count... 
Meaningless encounters 
where the emptiness remained.

That core Self within me 
ready for connection was not 
fulfilled like it was now.

Waves of excitement, peace, 
serenity, joy, clarity 
flowed through moments 
pregnant with meaning. 
Each moment was vast in duration 
each moment held eternity.

I had an epiphany and knew 
what mattered, what gave life meaning 
what filled that emptiness within 
that brought forth the fullness of the 
Self.

The feelings, moving in waves 
were markers of the profound - 
physical sensations that pointed beyond 
themselves to something transcendent, 
something that could not be reduced 
to chemistry or biology alone.

I have known alcoholics that look 
to a higher power. 
I have known the religious who 
speak of a God who alone 
can fill that emptiness 
within.

Everyone is looking 
for what will complete them, 
searching for transcendence 
in substances, in faith, 
in achievement, in escape.

But I have found something - 
I believe in something - 
I believe in love.

I can't prove it exists 
beyond hormonal desires 
beyond biological drives 
beyond what science can measure.

But I know what I experienced: 
love that is true 
and real 
and right...

Love that transforms 
without diminishing, 
that changes you 
without erasing who you are, 
that asks you to grow 
but never to disappear, 
that leads toward transcendence 
while keeping you whole. 
It shows you eternity 
in peaceful moments 
yet never asks you to sacrifice 
the fire of excitement, 
the expansion of joy, 
the sharp clarity of being fully alive, 
the creative force that moves through 
two people connected 
in the deepest way possible - 
embodying what it means 
to be complete 
while remaining yourself.

I Wrote a Love Poem Once

I wrote a love poem once...
I felt it was good -
I remember how good it felt -
the love...
to write the love poem,
to share it,
to dedicate it.
I felt the poem was good.

It was many years ago...
lost - lost in the fire,
as it were,
the love...
the love poem.

I forget how it goes
the love...
the love poem.

 

I just cannot remember
the words I wrote...
but I know I wrote
a love poem,
once...
or twice or more...

I can't quite remember
how it goes -
that feeling,
that certainty,
that desire to feel
that again.

Introduction to Poem “The Whole Story”

Our mutual friend Jean once observed that he saw us argue often, and I was shocked by his concern. Years later, after experiencing a relationship where disagreements felt threatening, where conversations could end with hang-ups, where love itself seemed in jeopardy over differences of opinion - I finally understood what Jean had missed.

With Lynn, I never hung up the phone. When she said, 'I'm not done talking,' I never said we couldn't keep talking. The cognitive dissonance I felt when Lynn challenged my beliefs didn't threaten our bond—it transformed my thinking, because I respected her completely and knew she respected me. Isn't it strange and amazing when you can become so frustrated and irritated in a relationship with someone special but still maintain that pervasive sense of happiness and contentment! Even despite all the fights and arguments, there was always an underlying joy. That is the ineffable nature of what we had—something taken out of context might look like conflict, but within the whole story, it was actually love expressing itself freely.

The Whole Story

Our love is now like an epic novel,
thousands of pages in length, 
with most pages torn 
others burned - in the tragic fire.

 I tried to save what I could 
believing it was worth saving
or worth holding onto - 
believing that nothing dies 
but in the end, 
what do I have? 

 

Just scraps of the book...

Even the ring that symbolized 
the bond of husband and wife 
is gone.

We wrote the book together - 
I remember how it was, 
page after page, 
chapter after chapter, 
lie scattered around a room 
in a forgotten home 
in a forgotten place 
like dark shadows 
under a hazy sky.

Page after page, 
written with a purpose 
written with love.

Sure, there were chapters 
that didn't seem to belong 
or have any purpose that could be understood 
but every part of the story 
had a purpose and place, 
whether good or bad 
within the larger narrative.

This was a story to be told 
for generations to come - 
passed down within the family 
and as part of a cultural tradition.

Looking back, 
at the whole book 
and not just a chapter here 
or there, 
taken out of context, 
you see a theme 
which emerges out of the many 
unplanned chapters.

It was always about love 
and that matters 
more than the quality of the narrative... 
it matters more than 
how things might have seemed 
at any one moment in time.

People have come and gone from my life.
There have been girlfriends.
But when something brings back an eternal memory —
the hush of waves, a hand on my skin, even a massage table —
it is never of them.

There are no gentle memories from childhood waiting to rise.
When my body recalls love, it returns only to Celta or Lynn.

These small poems are glimpses of that:
moments so deeply rooted they still live, waiting to be awakened.

Haiku Moments:

💍
The ring —
and her tears
of joy.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The ocean sounds.
Her lap beneath my head,
fingers soothing my headache.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

At twenty-three,
through the eyes
of love,
I awoke.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Watching the sun set
in my eyes,
in her eyes.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Her voice on the phone.
I tremble.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Walking hand-in-hand,
feeling cotton’s warmth
against my bare arm.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

In the moonlight
waves
from
waves.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Bare trees on a silent night —
like my memories of her
and love itself.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Silent winter night.
The sound of waves,
the comfort of her arms.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Feeling numb,
my face where
tears have frozen.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Curled up like an infant,
alone,
remembering her.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The memory of her voice,
indistinct like the sound of waves,
takes my breath away, still.

Having grown up with emotional neglect, I thought I had finally woken up when I saw myself through the eyes of love—with a girl, a young woman named Celta. That moment cracked open a new self. And still, the impulse to explain myself never left me. Maybe someone here knows that feeling too.

There was a time when I thought I had finally arrived—at love, at home, in a life of success, accomplishment, and peaceful contentment. Lynn was that life. Our love gave shape and meaning to everything else. It buffered me from old wounds, from the shadows of emotional neglect, and let me believe that, maybe, I was no longer invisible.

But then a meteor came crashing down upon my life. Lynn’s illness caught up with her. I was a healer—but only for the mind. All I could do was watch. It was like watching a fire consume everything I had built.

In the smoke and ash of that loss, I turned to my family of origin. I held out the ruins, hoping they’d see the devastation I couldn’t hide. But the truth is—I couldn’t even hide from it. The grief was all-consuming, like a fire itself—burning through everything I was, everything I’d built, everything I thought would last.

Instead of comfort, I received a bizarre sense of blame. As if I deserved it. As if I had brought it upon myself.

That was perhaps the cruelest wound—not the fire itself, but the silence that followed. I was no longer just grieving Lynn and the life I had. I was confronting that ancient, familiar ache: I am not worthy. I am not welcome. I spent a lifetime explaining myself to those who never intended to understand.

The moment I knew everything had changed was the day I walked into our home - Lynn’s and mine - and saw it being packed up. Her mother, who once bought us that house, was now preparing it for sale. It was too real. Too final. I stepped into the computer room—just to be out of sight of the boxes—and felt my legs give way. My body needed support; I slipped down the wall to a sitting position. The life force was gone.

This is the place these poems come from:
A world where identity collapses,
where memory stings like smoke in your eyes,
and where love, once lost, becomes a ghost you chase in dreams.

Dreamed I was a ghost 

I dreamed I was a ghost,
seeking you... screaming your name.
But you would not answer.

Then I could not find you.

I was alone,
an invisible spectator...
watching everything around me,
unable to be heard or seen,
haunting the once familiar spaces.
Now haunted - terrified - by the strangeness
of it all.

In the Boat 

This time it felt
just like a premonition.
In the dream,
I felt like a ghost -
I was there with you
transparent to your sight;
you looked right through me
not seeing me.  

My love for you
keeps these dreams alive.

There is something familiar
about the place.

There, by the water 
we stood,
yet you did not see me.
I watched you enter your sailboat.

I tried to call out to you;
I was scared
of losing you.

I watched you drift away,
fading out of sight.

The boat I enter
takes me back in time - 
back to you. 

Not Even Footprints Remain

Sometimes it seems that
I'm writing these words
on the sand,
like in that quaint picture,
"footprints in the sand."*

The wind is in my face...
Is this all there is?
Words that fade as fast as I write them?
My words dry as sand
that blows in my face
blinding me?

If only I could get you to look
before my words are lost.

In my vision, on the sand,
there are no footprints...
As if I'd never come here,
and never written these words.

Or it never mattered
what I said,
you would not see...
you are not here to see.

You are gone,
like our footprints,
like my words.

Gone!

Flashback

It’s strange how a place
can age-regress you—
fold back the years in an instant.
That’s what happened
when I stood there again.

There’s a man-made jetty
that arcs out to a small island
on the beach
south of Wilmington.

The photograph draws your eye inward—
just as standing there
drew me into myself.

Time collapsed.
Suddenly I was not just in a place—
but in a moment.

Our first day together,
our first real outing—
and the life we were about to build
had just begun.

Today,
the wind off the water
and the hush of waves
surprised me.

The place held the memory—
and the memory held me.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I like to believe
I'm just like anyone else—
that we all have limits.

There’s only so much
pain, fear, loss—
trauma—
we can carry
and still remain
ourselves.

Still hold on
to our values,
our sense of self,
the person we hoped to be.

But when the weight exceeds that limit,
something breaks.

We drift.
Not into sleep,
but somewhere else.
A fogged place.
Out of time.
Out of reach.

Sometimes,
if we’re lucky,
we come back.

But not everyone does.

Reflection: This poem echoes the confessional tradition of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, whose work dared to name the raw edges of psychic pain. Sexton’s To Bedlam and Part Way Back still haunts me. I sometimes wonder if she ever could make it all the way back.

I did.
At least, I think I did.

But some nights,
the line between coming back
and simply existing
feels paper-thin.

Introduction to the poem

Fuge State

I come to,
or awake,
finding myself already walking
somewhere unknown.

I’m not sure how I got here,
where here is,
or even where I meant to go.

A misty rain drifts down,
mingling with tears
that blur my eyes,
slide warm down my cold face.

Fog lifts off the street like smoke
as day slips toward night,
unwinding the edges of everything.

Street signs leer at me —
unrecognizable,
taunting with names that mean nothing.

I want to run.
Back.
Back in time.

Somewhere in this haze,
my mind glimpses
what can’t be real,
must be the
dream within
this dream.

Hours slip by.
My hands have gone numb.
Cold seeps through my coat
and down my back.
There is no sidewalk.
The winter streets slick with rain
or ice — I can’t quite tell.

Cars whip around corners,
far too fast —
their headlights slicing through me.
Each time I tell myself
they will miss me,
just like the last did.
Just like the lightning
will wait —
let me reach somewhere.

Not home —
that was long ago.
Home is gone.

Dogs bark in the distance.
I hope they keep to their fences,
hope I’m invisible.

No one knows where I am.
No one is waiting.
No one needs me
to get home safe.

Awareness trickles in,
thin as the lifting fog.
I stumble,
knees hit the cold asphalt —
not in reverence, only weakness —
and I whisper into the wet dark,
“Please help me.”

How pointless.
Even if belief could matter,
what would it change?

Walking again,
I see a convenience store glowing ahead.
A phone inside.
A roommate’s number
I can almost recall.

Being alone,
lost,
is a state of mind
that endures.

I will keep walking
unknown streets
in unknown towns,
alone
with no
identity.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_fugue

Lost

How did I get
so lost?

At first,
I thought I recognized the road.
A curve, a sign—
faint echoes of somewhere I’d been.

But then—
nothing familiar.
The signs made no sense.
The darkness deepened.

So I drove faster.
“Eventually something
will make sense,”
I told myself.

Fear crept in—
not ordinary fear,
but an existential kind.
The kind that whispers
you might not be real,
that no one is coming,
that even you don’t know
where you are.

My palms sweated.
Heart raced.
I was alone, in a dream
wearing the face of a nightmare.

So I turned off the road—
onto another,
even more unfamiliar.
No signs.
No map.
Just an instinct,
like something inside me screaming,
Anywhere but here.

But the fear didn’t fade.
It grew.
A new kind of terror -
not just from being lost,
but from knowing
I had once been found...
and still ended up here.

I’ve had this dream before.
Always the same turn.
Always the same ending.

The moment before waking,
I whisper inside the dream,
No. I can’t face this.

And I wake.
Still unsure
how I got
so far from myself.

Grief, Memory, and the Ghosts of Belonging

These poems were written in the shadow of a return—years after everything had unraveled. Sometime before 2010, I began making quiet pilgrimages back to Wilmington. I’d save up money, take the bus, rent a hotel room, or stay with a new friend. The place was the same—but not the same. The ocean still moved with its tide. The streets still bent around familiar corners. But Lynn was not there. The life we built was gone. And in its absence, everything I once knew became surreal.

The poems that follow—Desolation (or a Sign of the Times), The Color of Death, Tears for Grandmother’s Passing, and Genealogy—come from this in-between space:
Not quite home, not quite gone.
Not quite memory, not quite dream.

In them, I tried to make sense of what remained—both physically and emotionally. The ghost of our home, the loss of elders, the rupture of lineage, the fading of names and faces that were supposed to define who I was. But these poems aren’t simply about mourning. They are about absence—the kind that hollows out a person slowly, over time.

I was returning to places that once held love, hoping perhaps to find fragments of myself there. But grief doesn’t offer clean answers. Sometimes, it only echoes.

The Color of Death

I saw a little boy
carrying a dead fish
along the beach.

The fish was flat—decayed—
the color of wet sand
behind my tinted glasses,
which added to the gloom
of an overcast October day.

Just three months ago,
this beach teemed with life.

Now the waves fold inward,
the sun keeps its distance,
and the water no longer calls.

The days are getting colder.
I hate the cold.
It reminds me of something inside—
not just cold,
but lifeless.

People say life comes in seasons.
But there is no guarantee
that the warmth
I once knew
will ever return.

Desolation - A Sign of the Times

The land is parched.
The trees are bare—
they stand like burnt skeletons:
dead, soulless sentinels
left as markers
of what used to be.

The sun no longer shows itself.
Each day brings only gray—
flat, formless clouds above.

I cannot bear
this time,
this place,
this reality.

Gone are most colors.
All that remains are
dark browns
and shades of gray.

Some speak of endings
as a kind of hope.

But I see no end—
only this monotony,
this ache,
these days
stretching on
and on
and on.

Author’s Note:

This poem is not a glorification of suicide, a glimpse into the inner world of someone overtaken by despair. When suicidal ideation takes hold, it can feel like a different state of consciousness, a possession of sorts. Not metaphorical in feeling, even if metaphor is how we express it. If someone you love reaches that place, don’t wait for them to “act serious enough.” Don’t try to talk them out of it with slogans. Be there. Take them seriously. That presence might matter more than you know.

Possessed

I walk through days
as if inside a dream -
a dream within a dream.
Yesterday is now.
I am back from the dead,
with the stench of death
still clinging.

I tried to end it
back in December -
pills after alcohol.
Three days later,
I was planning again
when I got out.

A girl stepped into the hallway.
"You can't sleep either?"
Her words reached me.
"You mean... I’m not alone?"
For the first time, I wondered.

No, I didn’t see visions.
No voices called to me.
But the world felt hollow—
dark, cold,
like everything had stopped
but the echo.

It’s like being possessed.
Not by demons -
but by absence.
A silence so complete
it hums.

Anne Sexton wrote:
"Suicides have a special language...
They never ask why build."
And that’s it, really—
it wasn’t a question.
It was a certainty.
A shadow that settled in.

And when it does,
death speaks.
Not loudly—
just enough
to drown out everything else.

Tears for Grandmother's Passing 

Introduction to the Poem

This poem came from a quiet, in-between moment—one of the last visits I had with my grandparents while I was in college. I was 21, traveling between school in Georgia and work up north, and their home in Burlington, North Carolina had become a stopover. But it wasn’t just a place to rest—it was a place where, for a little while, I felt I belonged.

During that visit, my grandmother asked me to look around the house and decide what I might want to keep when she passed—some item, some heirloom, to remember them by. I nodded, said I’d think about it, but in truth I had no idea what to say. I thought we had more time. I didn’t want to imagine the world without her in it.

Years later, after she’d suffered a stroke, Grandmother lived in a nursing home with fading memory. She didn’t know that her daughter—my aunt—had died of cancer before her. Perhaps that was a blessing. What still shakes me, even now, is how my family handled these losses, and how the news came to me.

I wasn’t prepared for the way I found out that two others I loved had also died—by suicide. Auntie Rosie, who wasn’t family by blood but was family in all the ways that matter, took her own life with a shotgun. I had never known she was depressed. And my cousin Karen hanged herself. My sister delivered both pieces of news as though they were routine facts. There was no space for grief. My mind could barely take it in. I had dreams where Rosie looked fine, untouched. My brain rejected what it couldn’t absorb.

Grief like that doesn’t come in a neat procession of tears and closure. It crashes in, long after the house is gone, the photos lost, the people scattered. It catches you while writing a poem, remembering a room, touching a chair.

In some ways, this poem is about my grandparents. In others, it’s about every home I’ve lost, including the one I shared with Lynn. That home, too, was packed up and sold while I stood there, unable to stop it. I watched the evidence of my life disappear, just as I would imagine the fading away of my grandparents from this reality - the only reality I knew.

.

The items vanish. The people fade. And you’re left wondering what still belongs to you.

Here is the poem below.

Tears for Grandmother’s Passing

I'm sorry, Grandmother,
that I didn’t give it more thought
when you asked me
to look around your home—
to choose something
to remember you by.

Mementos, handed down for generations.
Photographs, albums,
kitchen chairs and quilted pillows.
At twenty-one, I still believed
there would always be time.

But time runs silent
until it doesn't.
And comfort—
and belonging—
can be forgotten
in a room full of fading items.

You didn’t mean for it to go like this,
I know.
Not a nursing home.
Not the dimming of memory.
Not knowing your husband had passed,
or your daughter before you.
Maybe, in some mercy,
you were spared that pain.

They said you wouldn’t know me.
So they didn’t bring me.
But it would have hurt
in the right kind of way—
the way grief should hurt
when it means something.

Later, they told me Rosie was gone.
Shotgun, they said.
And Karen—
they said she hanged herself.
And I dreamed of Rosie smiling,
untouched.
My mind rewriting the unbearable.
No one asked how I was doing.
No one let me mourn.

If there’s awareness after death,
or something of us that remains,
know this:
I shed a tear for you today.
For you, and for them.
For what we lost,
and how no one spoke it.

And I remembered.
And that memory—
that ache—
feels like love.

And it’s good.
And it’s right.

Author’s Note

This poem first appeared in Simple Vows, published by St. Andrews College in Pembroke, NC, where I was honored to be featured alongside poets I deeply admire—many of whom shaped the literary landscape of North Carolina and beyond.

“Genealogy” emerged during a time when I was still seeking meaning in ancestral roots—hoping perhaps for a feeling of belonging. I walked among graves that bore my last name, thinking I might find some proof of where I came from. But what I found was silence. Names that never knew me. Stones that never spoke my story.

I have since come to understand that the true legacy we carry is not biological but relational. My life was shaped not by the names etched on tombstones, but by those who loved me fiercely—Celta, Lynn, those who truly saw me. They are the ones who made my life meaningful, not the ancestors whose names I happened to inherit.

This poem is not a rejection of history but a protest against the way families can scapegoat, erase, and exile those who never asked to be cast out. I was the outlier long before I found the courage to speak my truth. Whatever the reasons—unstated, unearned—I was cut off without explanation, unseen despite everything I accomplished. I bore the family name, carried the best of my parents’ intellect, and still, I was othered. Their choice to exclude me severed any obligation I once felt to protect their silence.

By the time I began to speak the truth, it was already clear:
I hadn’t walked away—
I had been erased.
Now, through these pages, I reclaim the narrative they abandoned.
Not to belong to them,
but to honor the ones who made me feel I truly belonged.

Because in the end, what really matters is not legacy—but love.

Genealogy

(Originally published in Simple Vows, St. Andrews College, Pembroke, NC. Revised by the author in 2025.)

Self-history in quest of
self-knowledge brought me
today
to this
church cemetery.
A certain history—
made visible in stone.

I saw my last name—Whealton—
etched on so many markers.
Written here,
and here, and on a stone next to this one,
and over there, and there,
and there again...

Yet nothing stirred in me.
No sense of inheritance.
These were not the hands that raised me,
not the arms that comforted me,
not the voices that shaped my name.

Why were my ancestors put into the ground
like plants?
From dust thou art—
it says in the Bible,
and to dust thou shalt return.
But what does that mean
if love doesn't root there?

I see my ancestors
immortalized in tombstones
with the name I carry.
Will I live on as well—
through my writing, maybe?

The road I traveled to reach this place
was too quiet, too deserted.
A town of ghosts
where my ghosts tell me nothing.

In the church my great-great-grandfather built
I found albums of the living
posing beside the dead—
names I should know,
but don’t.

What did I come here seeking?
Proof?
Origin?
Belonging?

All I found was dust—
along the roads,
between the stones.
And names
that never meant me.