I never set out to become a writer, not like this

For me, writing is not a hobby, or some romantic

idea of self-expression, but survival, more like

surgery without anaesthesia, as my grief did not

want to be gently examined, but it wanted to spit

and sob, mourning without manners, so I let it

and I grabbed my pen because I was drowning

Writing did not save me, but it threw me a rope

it became my lifeline, my words did not come out

poetic or polished, but ugly, screaming, bleeding

no structure, no plan, no commas to pause my pain

no elegant phrasing to dress my wound, because

my grief demands me to be honest, to expose

the truth, sharp, unfiltered, sometimes unbearable

In those broken, brutal paragraphs, I meet her again

not just the version of my mum that the world saw

but the small, fierce lady who loved me in the way

only she could, for those moments, as I scribbled

or typed with shaking hands and a chest full of ache

she felt close, closer than anything could bring her

closer than anyone else could ever understand

Writing gives me a place to go, a permission to

remember her exactly as she was, not the ideal

not the idol, just her, beautifully, maddeningly

imperfectly human, so I keep writing, finding her

again and again, in the sacred ruins of every raw

real word, and if the ink is messy, good, because

so was grief, so was love, so was she, and so am I