The other day someone asked
“How do you write?”
Here is how I pull together verses: I wander in a fog, stumble over words, clutch them like lifelines—as if they might somehow save me; the fog congeals, swallows me whole and I tumble, engulfed in a seductive sea of delusion—lost, swimming desperately for shore until at last I break through the haze: chaos clings to my skin—words glimmer, shimmer, converge—rise with me from the depths—no longer lifelines but librettos, lyrics with rhythm sturdy and sure, shapes bending into form. I cradle the verse—seedling poetry, fragile but alive, barely breathing. The fog lifts; the page exhales. I write.
The Spaces Between: Poetry as a Language of Trauma
Sometimes words fail us. Regular writing—you know, the kind with nice neat sentences all lined up in tidy rows—just can’t capture how trauma actually feels. How it fragments everything. How it makes time skip and stutter like a scratched record.
(And don’t even get me started on trying to explain it to therapists.)
But poetry? Poetry gets it. Poetry knows how to speak in silences, in broken lines, in all the spaces between what we can and can’t say out loud.
Take my poem “Sister lost.” When I write:
She was
so easy
to forget.
Notice those breaks between the lines? They’re doing as much work as the words. Maybe more. They’re speaking in the language of empty spaces, of memories that refuse to stay whole, of all the things we can’t quite remember—or can’t bear to remember.
The white space around those words isn’t just empty paper. It’s all the silence that comes after someone vanishes. It’s all the questions we don’t ask. It’s all the answers we will never get.
When Silence Screams
Sometimes it’s the spaces between words that scream the loudest. Like all those schoolday mornings where only two lunches were ready to carry to school. Two. Not three. Or how we learned to tiptoe around certain topics, certain memories, certain names.
In “Sister lost,” even the physical shape of the poem speaks to this:
Abandoned in the darkness
of the basement
urine-stained mattress
tossed on the floor
near
shelves filled with dust-covered jars—
grandma’s home-canned
blueberries, green beans, raspberry jam.
See how the words tumble down the page? How they create their own dark spaces? That’s not just formatting—that’s the shape of memory when it’s trying to both remember and forget at the same time.
Time Isn’t Always a Straight Line
Those loud spaces between the words…like all those family dinners where we carefully didn’t mention the empty chair. Or how we learned to tiptoe around certain topics, certain memories, certain names.
Trauma has its own calendar, its own clock. Yesterday might feel like tomorrow, while twenty years ago could be happening right now. Poetry gets this. It doesn’t force us to write in straight lines or neat chronological order.
In “Another black hole,” I explore this warped sense of time:
Where did Mother say
she was going?
I thought she said
she was going to a hospital
she said to have a surgery
for something in her belly?
she said…
it was… was it…
I think it was a hernia?
didn’t she say that?
she said not to worry
though, and so I haven’t.
The way the questions circle back, the way memory tries to make sense of what happened—this is how trauma time works. Not in a neat line from A to B, but in spirals and loops and sudden drops into darkness.
Finding Words for the Unspeakable
Sometimes the only way to tell a hard truth is to come at it sideways. Poetry gives us permission to do this. It lets us use metaphor when literal language fails us. It allows us to break rules when the rules aren’t serving the truth we need to tell.
Sometimes it means
letting the words scatter across the page like shattered glass
Sometimes it means
letting silence do the heavy lifting
Sometimes it means
trusting that what isn't said is just as important as what is
Because in the end, that’s what poetry does best—it gives us a language for the unspeakable. It creates a space where trauma can speak in its own tongue, where memory can move at its own pace, where healing doesn’t have to follow anyone else’s timeline.
I write poetry because sometimes it’s the only way to tell these stories. When regular sentences won’t do, when memories refuse to line up in neat paragraphs, poetry steps in and says “It’s okay. Break the rules. Leave spaces. Let silence speak.”
Because here’s the thing about trauma—it doesn’t just live in the words we manage to say. It lives in the hesitations. In the pauses. In all those spaces between what we can and can’t bring ourselves to write down. (In the empty chair at the breakfast table. In the questions we still can’t ask. In the answers we’re still waiting for—and will never get.)
But poetry? Poetry knows how to hold all of it. The spoken and unspoken. The remembered and forgotten. The past that won’t stay past and the present that keeps skipping like an old scratched record.
And sometimes, in those spaces between the lines, in those carefully crafted silences, we find something that feels a lot like healing.
The Power of the Unspoken: White Space in Poetry
You know those moments in conversation when someone pauses, and that pause says more than words ever could? Poetry knows about those moments. Poetry lives in those moments.
Take my poem “Ghosts of children linger.” When I write:
Forlorn in hollow silence
alone in a dusty attic
haunting barren halls
gloomy
desolate
corridors
See how those single words—"gloomy," "desolate"—stand alone? How they create their own islands of meaning? That's not accident. That's the weight of absence made visible on the page.
White Space as a Mirror of Loss
When people vanish from our lives—whether through distance, time, or more permanent goodbyes—they leave spaces.
holiday table set for none
ghosted by empty chairs
stories untold
questions unanswered
cloth set heavy with
silent goodbyes
These gaps appear in our homes—empty chairs, silent rooms, photo albums gathering dust. Just as these physical spaces mark absence, the flow of words on the page reveals loss in a different way:
“Beyond the mists of bygone days, they wander foreign paths in worlds apart—perhaps they meandered and danced and promised their hearts in fairy circles, gone so far from home.”
Notice how this passage flows in an unbroken stream? That’s how memory works too—sometimes rushing forward in a flood of words, as if stopping to breathe, to leave space, would mean losing the memory entirely. Sometimes we need that continuous flow to hold onto what’s slipping away.
The Weight of Absence
Absence has its own gravity. Just as a physical void creates pull, emptiness in poetry draws both eye and emotion into its depths. In the spaces between stanzas, in the white expanse around solitary words, we feel that inexorable draw:
little faces bright
running feet
piercing laughter
lost to time
only their ghosts remain
here in the realm between.
Each line carries both presence and absence—what was, what is, what might have been. The white space around these words holds all the things we can't quite say, all the memories that slip through our fingers like attic dust.
Finding Our Way Through Space
Sometimes we need the gaps, the pauses, the empty spaces on the page. Just as we need moments of silence to process grief, poetry needs white space to free the meaning and allow it to emerge:
Yet here they dwell
in the realm
between
their paths
unseen
here in the dusty attic
Each gap between lines is a held breath. Each indent is a step back in time. Each blank space is a door left open for readers to walk through with their own story, their own loss, their own understanding.
The Mathematics of Emotion: Finding Precision in Poetry
Mathematics and poetry might seem like unlikely partners, but they share a fundamental truth: both seek patterns in chaos. Sometimes, when emotions become too vast to hold, we reach for numbers—not just to count, but to contain. In my poem “Mathematical Soup,” this intersection of mathematics and meaning becomes a way to process family violence:
The basket slowly empties.
Carrots: one, two, three, five, eight…thirteen?
If uncle’s anger multiplies
how long ’til it reaches infinity?
Notice how the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13) appears here—a mathematical pattern found in nature, now mapping the unnatural growth of fear. Numbers become both escape and evidence.
Mathematics offers a strange comfort when emotions become too chaotic to contain. Numbers create boundaries, patterns, something solid to hold onto when feelings threaten to overflow.
The Language of Logic
Even the structure of trauma can be mapped mathematically. When I write “Chop. Chop. Now the celery, next the bagies,” each precise action creates order from chaos. The rhythm of counting vegetables becomes a lifeline when Uncle’s anger threatens to drown everything in noise:
Grandma chopping vegetables for soup, slowly
so slowly, hands swollen raw and red—
knife sharp (due to grandpa’s diligence)
board on her lap, carefully balanced.
In this kitchen scene, every measurement serves a dual purpose. We count the vegetables to avoid counting bruises. We time the chopping to avoid timing the outbursts. Each careful calculation—how many carrots, how long to simmer, how many mouths to feed—becomes a shield against chaos. Mathematics gives us the illusion of control when everything else spins into violence.
Calculations as Coping
Numbers give us distance when emotions cut too close. They offer a language stripped of sentiment, a way to document without drowning in feeling:
Soup to feed all six of us, plus temper for topping.
No blood beads skim the surface of our soup—not today.
We turn to mathematics when metaphor isn’t enough. Count the days between outbursts. Measure the space between safety and danger. Calculate the odds of escape. Division becomes more than arithmetic—it’s about separating ourselves from pain. Subtraction isn’t just about numbers—it’s about what’s been taken away.
But even precision has its limits:
Potatoes, tomatoes, peas, yes. Fish, no.
Snap the beans, save the ends for compost, save
all the peelings for compost.
Notice how the word ‘save’ repeats? Sometimes what we’re really counting isn’t vegetables at all—it’s attempts at salvation. Each careful measurement becomes both escape and prayer: If we follow the recipe exactly, if we count everything perfectly, maybe we can cook our way to safety.
Finding Order in Chaos
Each number in “Mathematical soup” is a small rebellion against disorder. Even negatives become powerful:
zero turnips plus zero turnips, equals no turnips today.
Grandma’s hands are red, Uncle’s face is red.
He shouts loud. She chops wordless.
Mathematics gives us a framework when emotions overwhelm. Through calculations, we attempt to quantify the unquantifiable: How many vegetables make a meal safe? How many minutes until the storm passes? How many steps from kitchen to doorway? Each number becomes a talisman against chaos.
The equation grows more complex: If anger multiplies exponentially, does silence grow at the same rate? If we subtract one violent uncle from a family of six, what remainder are we left with? These aren’t just mathematical problems—they’re survival calculations.
Beyond Numbers
But sometimes the most precise measurement is silence itself—the space between numbers, the pause between calculations, the moment when mathematics fails and we’re left with only the raw truth of what cannot be counted.
In these moments, poetry steps in where mathematics leaves off. Because while we can count the carrots, measure the minutes, calculate the odds, some things defy quantification: The weight of fear in a child’s heart. The depth of a grandmother’s silence. The infinite distance between what is and what should have been.
Yet we keep counting, keep measuring, keep trying to make sense of what defies logic. Because sometimes the only way to face the immeasurable is to break it down into smaller, countable pieces—one carrot, one minute, one breath at a time.
cynthia loves poetry 