High above, the sky is burning,

and I can’t lift my eyes.

I’m only what is passing,

what keeps passing me by.

Branches bend ~

a flicker of dark,

like film burned through.

It isn’t there.

Just a wing,

erased against the trees.

A shadow of a bird ~

I can’t stop it.

The day unfolds,

I watch it happen.

I’m a frame without the film,

I’m a body without weight.

The air splits,

a feather of silence,

a fracture in glass.

The bird is high;

I only catch

what it leaves behind.

Hands won’t close ~

air runs through them.

I walk, I walk,

but I’m not in it.

The sky is burning,

the trees don’t move.

The shadow passes ~

and I don’t.

Shadow of a bird ~

I can’t touch it.

The sky is too far;

earth won’t take me.

I’m behind myself again,

dragging daylight through my teeth.

I wake inside the distance,

a step behind my skin.

The room keeps moving forward

but I’m not in it.

I’m behind myself again,

watching shadows pull me through.

Can’t stop the day from happening,

it just happens without truth.

Shadow of a bird, high above,

burning in the sky.

All I am is what is passing,

slipping, passing by.

The mirror blurs my outline,

the eyes don’t look like mine.

The voice is thin and hollow,

like a signal down a line.

I’m behind myself again,

watching shadows pull me through.

Can’t stop the day from happening,

it just happens without truth.

Shadow of a bird, high above,

burning in the sky.

All I am is what is passing,

slipping, passing by.

Hands won’t close around it,

the moment slips away.

I walk but never enter,

I breathe but I don’t stay.

I’m behind myself again,

a ghost sewn to the seam.

The bird is only shadow,

I’m unraveling between.

Like a dream I can’t awaken,

like a name I can’t recall.

The day keeps moving forward

but I’m not there at all.

Only shadow.

Only shadow.

Only ….

The weight pressed in

from every side.

I forgot the sound

of what I love.

I stayed too long

in the dark,

where nothing grew,

where I couldn’t move.

But the road betrayed the highway

turned me into trees,

where the lake was silver,

and the wind was breathing.

I pulled aside,

shut the engine,

let September

touch my skin.

Rerouted

not just past the traffic.

Rerouted

back into myself.

The mountains,

the silence,

the crickets in the grass

they still remember me.

The rocks, the rivers,

the echoes of my parents’ voices.

Our stream,

has always been my anchor.

I just forgot.

The long way home

rewrote my mind.

The long way home

was the only way back.

~Jessi

#freeverse

House on fire at three A.M.

Smoke curls into my skin again.

Whispers crawl along the ceiling,

Say I’ll never learn the feeling.

September leans against the door,

Nails against the hardwood floor.

I thought I was someone else,

But the silence knows me more.

And it’s all right there —

Ashes dressed in velvet air.

Every mirror breaks me down,

But no one hears a sound.

The silence is so loud.

Fevered dreams and silver knives,

Cut the threads of borrowed lives.

Everyone’s a saint in glass,

I’m the shadow that won’t pass.

Memory slips between my hands,

Like sand in a foreign land.

I thought I was someone new,

But the night shows me the truth.

And it’s all right there —

Ashes dressed in velvet air.

Every mirror breaks me down,

But no one hears a sound.

The silence is so loud.

Midnight knows the darker side,

The part of me I try to hide.

It feels more real than the day,

And it never goes away.

And it’s all right there —

Ashes dressed in velvet air.

Every mirror breaks me down,

But no one hears a sound.

The silence is so loud.

~jessi

Shower.

Towel.

Same steps.

Same floor.

Hands on autopilot

while the walls lean in.

I’m spinning,

body of the infinite~

cells like galaxies

crashing in the dark.

My eyes~black holes,

spitting out a universe

I can’t crawl out of.

Room tilts.

Breath short.

Skin hums.

Clock too loud.

Hold the routine

like a rope in a storm.

I’m spinning,

body of the infinite~

cells like galaxies

crashing in the dark.

My eyes~black holes,

spitting out a universe

I can’t crawl out of.

Their voices ripple~

not the words,

but something underneath,

humming just out of reach.

Like they’re speaking

through a veil of static,

and I’m the only one

who hears the code.

I look at their faces

and wonder if I ever knew them~

or if they were just

constellations passing

through my orbit.

Space is a mirror,

constellations in my veins.

Looking out to keep

from looking in.

Maybe the galaxies we chase

are only the ones

we’re made of.

I blink~

world blinks back.

Every step rehearsed,

gravity forgets my name.

~Jessi

I found you when the years were heavy,

in the fullness of our days.

Blue stone burned beneath the sun,

we offered not for riches,

not for thrones ~

only for the binding of our lives.

And for a long while,

it was enough.

The years went on ~

floods came, armies passed.

I hardly noticed the ruin,

your hand was always in mine.

Until the day you looked at me

without knowing ~

no history in your eyes,

only a blank kindness,

and weary sighs.

I called you by the names

you once whispered in the dark.

But you only looked away.

I remember for both of us,

I carry what you let go.

If you can’t recall our story,

I’ll be the one who knows.

That was the reign of forgetting ~

greater than war,

greater than flood.

The empire of forgetting.

I lost you,

while you sat beside me.

And I carried the whole of us alone.

Still, the tablets remembered.

I carried them through centuries.

I found you again

your face had changed, yet

I would have known you in any age.

I spoke our story like a prayer.

You only smiled politely,

as if it belonged to someone else.

I remember for both of us,

I carry what you let go.

If you can’t recall our story,

I’ll be the one who knows.

So I speak to you across the ages

one life, two lives, ten.

I will always remember.

And if the gods are merciful,

they’ll set us down again

in a gentler world,

where you will not forget,

and I will not remind you

who we are.

Where it began

Back when the ovens burned past midnight,

you carried boxes into the dark.

I wore an apron, counting tips,

you slipped me poems on paper scraps.

But I was restless, chasing distance,

while you stayed, holding the flame.

Distance / Waiting

Sometimes the ones meant to be

face the hardest battles~

not because they’re wrong,

but because the world

tests everything real.

The missed chance

Years later, a bar light,

we talked till the sky turned pale.

Your eyes still carried the fire,

but I wasn’t ready,

so I walked.

What love is

Love like this isn’t easy.

It waits in silence,

aches through distance,

grows in the dark.

An intuition

When I called, it was higher love~

a spark I thought had gone.

I brought my daughter to your house,

her hands digging roots in your soil.

We built a garden that summer,

watched her trust grow leaf by leaf.

Through storms

Nine years through thunder and loss,

through debts, miscarriages,

the weight of shadows.

Still we kept choosing~

again and again.

The fear now

Now sickness knocks,

the ground shakes.

And I wonder if we’ll bend or break.

But I believe in what we’ve sown~

a love the storm can’t overthrow.

The truth

This love didn’t just survive the storm,

it learned to breathe inside it.

Unbreakable~

because of it.

~ Jessi (free verse) #chronicles

My story kicks off in Brooklyn, New York ~ where the sirens and the street vendors made their own kind of symphony, and the Italian immigrant rhythm was the soundtrack to life. That’s where I made my grand entrance. A little early, a little creaky, and definitely not on the doctor’s schedule ~ he was running late from a Fourth of July party. So, picture this: fireworks in the sky, my mom on the operating table, and me finally arriving by C-section into their arms at Long Island College Hospital.

I was a month premature and spent my first month in the ICU, basically starring in my own hospital musical. My parents sang Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely over my incubator while doctors scratched their heads about my odd creaks. Turns out, it wasn’t music ~ it was mutated collagen. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. A connective tissue disorder that would shape a lot of my story. But all I knew at the time was: life started with noise, drama, and a lot of wondering. Even my baby brain was already asking ~ was this going to be a comedy or a tragedy?

Now, let me tell you about my parents. They were a 70s movie couple if there ever was one. Both from Downtown Brooklyn, grew up two blocks apart, pinching cheeks, sneaking kisses on stoops. Real rom-com stuff. My mom ~ she was stunning, Kardashian-beautiful before Kardashians were even a thing. But life wasn’t easy on her. Asthmatic, brittle diabetic, allergic to everything with a scent ~ my dad thought she was the cutest thing alive.

But me? I worried about her all the time. I worried she wouldn’t always be there. And that wasn’t just kid-paranoia ~ she had stories. And when my mom told a story, she didn’t skip the suffering. Like the time she got hit by a car on Fourth Place, and my Grandpa Angelo’s longshoreman buddies lined up to donate blood to save her. Or the Christmas Eve she spent in the hospital because her uncles and aunts smoked so much the whole house was a nicotine cloud. The doctor was literally puffing a cigarette while asking, “What could it be?”

That was my mom: fragile but fierce, tragic and funny, beautiful and complicated. And those stories? My little body absorbed them like secondhand smoke. I felt them, almost like they were my own.

And then there was the family. Oh, the family. My parents’ families tangled together like the perfect Sunday sauce. Dads and uncles working on the docks, cousins everywhere, fruit stands turning into candy stores and brownstones, and everybody calling everybody “Cuz.” I had twenty-one cousins on my mom’s side alone. Ten more on my dad’s. Family gatherings? Forget it ~ they were chaos, an episode of The Bear before The Bear existed. But I loved every second of it.

Even when we moved upstate, Brooklyn followed us. Every weekend we’d go back for pasta bowls bigger than your head at Grandma Teresa’s, or to see Grandma Lucia at Simone’s Beauty Shop ~ yes, the one with the slot machine in the back, where I won $50 at six years old. I strutted down the street with old ladies parading me around like I’d hit the jackpot. Because I had. That’s what it felt like growing up in that family: like you were always rich, even if you weren’t.

And when we finally stayed put upstate, our new place became the new hub. Two acres of land, a brook with frogs and crawfish, a beaver dam feeding into the lake. Dogs barking, cousins in high heels trying to keep up with me barefoot and wild. It was a childhood stitched together with laughter, chaos, family, and that endless stream in the backyard.

Upstate life was a different rhythm. Dirt roads instead of stoops, brooks instead of hydrants. I was a classic ADHD overthinker, oblivious to my own beauty, loud and curious, always with a scrape or bruise to show off. My Brooklyn accent faded into the mountains, but I stayed the same kid: riding my bike with wild joy, collecting rocks, pulling crawfish from the brook, and showing off my dislocating shoulder trick like it was a party favor.

School, though ~ that was a mixed bag. Middle school had all the neon of the ’80s—Trapper Keepers, shoulder pads, big hair ~and also the sting of cruelty. My diaries filled with secret poetry were stolen. Older girls made me their enemy. I couldn’t understand it ~because the truth was, I was sweet. Silly, fun, quick-witted. Boys liked me, but I didn’t know what to do with that. Girls resented me. And all I wanted was to float outside the labels, to let people be who they were. But society loves its labels. And once they stuck you with one, you wore it like a scar.

High school was no easier. I got pulled into the wrong crowd ~the drinkers, the drifters—when what I really wanted was theater, music, art. Instead, I clung to my first boyfriend like he was a lifeboat. He broke my heart, and I swore the world had ended. My parents had a love story for the ages~why didn’t I? In that teenage despair, I even thought about ending it, stepping in front of a car just to stop the ache. Drama, sure. But it was real to me then.

College should have been my fresh start. Instead, I dove headfirst into rebellion. I studied Communications but gave just as much energy to chaos. Spring break? I was there. Leopard print on leopard print? That was me.

That’s when I met him. A guy from New Jersey at a beach bar. He loved my fire, and he had money~lottery winnings, family business connections, a beach house. It felt like a movie: first-class tickets, Vegas weekends, wardrobes I didn’t know what to do with. For a girl from a family of longshoremen and pasta bowls, it was dazzling.

But it was also suffocating. Like slipping into a gorgeous dress two sizes too small. The seams stretched, and I stretched with them~until I didn’t even recognize myself. I married him anyway, because that’s what you do when you think you’ve found your forever. But forever isn’t always what it looks like.

That “forever” turned into paranoia, manipulation, and silence. I lost my voice. In my twenties, I should have been thriving. Instead, I was curled inward, shrinking smaller and smaller in someone else’s shadow. Until one day, I couldn’t anymore.

Leaving wasn’t glamorous~it was survival. I left everything behind. Didn’t tell anyone until after I was gone. I moved back in with my parents, a twenty-something divorcee. My Italian family barely had a word for that. They sent me to the priest to request an annulment, like I could just erase what happened with a signature.

But that return home? That was my reset. I picked up a guitar. I wrote poetry. I went back to school for Psychology and Philosophy. I got tested, learned I had ADHD and learning differences, finally got the support I needed. I joined Psi Chi. I got certified in Yoga and Mindfulness. And slowly, I found my own voice again.

For the first time, I wasn’t chasing someone else’s path. I was carving my own.

Of course, life wasn’t done surprising me. At a Murder Mystery party—I was in my glory~I ran into my high school nemesis. The guy who once called me a “princess” while my grandmother was dying of cancer. That comment had burned a hole through me for years. That night, I finally let him have it.

One drunken argument turned into a walk in the woods. Which somehow turned into us being inseparable. Life’s funny like that.

Six months later, I was pregnant. And there it was again~chaos, demons, struggles that weren’t mine to fix. He wrestled with alcohol, moods, shadows. I wrestled with myself, trying once again to disappear into someone else.

But this time, I had a daughter. And when she was four, I chose differently. I chose light. I chose leaving. Not just for me, but for her.

Now, with arthritis in my joints and clarity in my heart, I raise my daughter with one promise: she will never lose her voice the way I did.

I tell her: listen for it. That small voice, even when the world gets loud, even when love knocks you sideways. Listen for it. That’s you. That’s the thread you never let go of.

My life isn’t polished. It’s jagged, messy, loud, full of comic timing, absurdity, heartbreak, resilience, and too much pasta. But it’s mine.

And it began with a creaky cry in Brooklyn, fireworks overhead, and the question that still follows me: Can you hear yourself calling?

~ Jessi #bio

We grew up where the brook bent its song through the backyard,

chasing frogs with bare feet,

dogs circling, ducks drifting.

The roots of the trees held us steady,

while the current carried us forward.

Family filled the air like summer—

voices, laughter, plates passed hand to hand.

It was a house that breathed love.

No one else will know it—

the stories etched in that place,

the way we look at each other and smile

because we remember.

Bound in the same currents,

we learned how to swim together,

how to carry what we couldn’t name.

We didn’t know then

why her voice would shift,

why her moods would climb and fall.

It was ours to hold,

to us it was just the weather of the house.

We learned to read it,

to hold on tighter,

to love her anyway.

And in that, we became stronger.

No one else will know it—

the soil beneath those days,

the way we grew into each other

by surviving the same storms.

Bound in the same currents,

we learned how to stand together,

how to carry what we couldn’t name.

Even when the world feels uncertain,

when distance stretches too far,

I remember the brook,

the roots,

the steady hum of belonging.

You and I—

we are the echo of that home.

Bound by love,

bound by what we carried,

forever linked—

the brook still running through us.

~Jessi #sibling #growingup #family #freeverse

The weight of a raindrop changes

No resistance from the skies.

Tonight one falls, soaked in hell,

Straight from my conscious mind.

It splatters where it lands,

Where my breaking body bends.

Blood and stinging tears

Trace the gutter’s bitter end.

Your eyes are watching mine

And they’re caving in.

All of me slopes sideways,

Condemned to puddles again.

And I fall into the storm,

Shaking like a coward.

Guilty of the sin that moves me~

I let it pull me harder.

The car door opens;

The station sings my shame…

And I pray the storm won’t still be here

When morning calls my name.

Tires drum through silence,

The red lights blur and smear.

Your hair’s the perfect mess~

My face hides from the mirror.

The rain interrogates the window,

But I won’t let it in.

You’re talking in your calm voice~

And I twist every word again.

You read me like a novel,

Pages ripped and raw.

You see me, you could kill me~

And still, you choose it all.

So I fall into the storm,

Shaking like a coward.

Guilty of the sin that moves me~

I let it pull me harder.

Cruise control is on…

And I can’t retrace these miles.

I just pray the storm dissolves

Before I lose my fight.

Even locked away,

I’m still not safe~

My thoughts, they leak and flood the space.

And every flashing streetlamp

Holds some version of my shame…

But your hand stays steady

Even when I say your name.

So I fall into the storm,

A prayer clenched in my throat.

The guilt, the grip, the cruise control

Still driving through the smoke.

You could break me… you could leave me…

You could love me, still.

But I just pray the storm lets go~

And morning finds me still.

~Jessi

#freeverse