What the Fire Left Behind (Poetry)

I left the house that burned me and became someone new.

A pecan limb reaches skyward — where memory clings like moss. Photo via .

Introduction

Some truths can only be told in layers — one beneath the other, like clay beneath loam, or roots beneath scorched earth. In The Weight of One, I gave voice to the grief that lingers when those who shaped us are gone, leaving behind unanswered questions and invisible scars.

This poem reaches further back, to the orchard rows and closed doors of childhood, where correction was doctrine, and conformity was survival. It is a reckoning with memory, discipline, and the long journey toward releasing what we were never meant to carry.

The Roots of Peach and Pecan
Forgiveness buried in Southern clay

The willow never wept for me,
not in those acres scorched by dread,
where switches crowned the orchard trees
and spare the rod was all they said.

The screen door clapped like judgment’s gavel,
a psalm in every stinging slap.
The rafters hummed with doctrine’s weight,
each lash a verse, each welt a trap.