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by Z. L. Wiley (Author)
In this collection of poems, Z.L. Wiley writes from the wreckage and reckoning that followed a two-and-a-half-year relationship forged in recovery and fractured by relapse. What began as a love story slowly reveals itself as something more complex: a mirror of childhood wounds, survival strategies, and the quiet normalization of pain. These poems move through the aftermath of sexual abuse, addiction, and complex trauma with Wiley tracing the ache of loving and being loved by someone who cannot stay, the terror of watching self-destruction up close, and the psychic rupture of a suicide attempt. Wiley then explores her own patterns of reenactment, the ways we return to familiar harm because it once kept us alive, and the line between resilience and self-abandonment.
Yet Wiley does not linger only in grief. Threaded throughout is a fierce devotion to beauty, courage, and truth. Wiley finds meaning in the mess, language in the unspeakable, and love even where it has been distorted. Ultimately, these poems reach toward recovery, not as a destination, but as a practice: learning how to imagine new ways of loving without erasing the past.
