Poem from last year

Your fault. Her fault Their's Never his The words start to tangle And he starts to twist Voices begin to scream Objects thrown The dodging game again Guard your tone The fingers point Here comes the flood Voices raise higher Words spilt out like blood They splatter on the ground Glass shatters When will she learn Only his voice matters Liquid stains the floor Seeping through the gaps The broken home tainted, The slow unending collapse. The power is his You beg and plead This charade again His pathetic need The silence after. It's hollow and hard The stains stare back at her; So do the shards. He smiles again. Hand slithers to hers No matter what happened It could always be worse.

Soothing raindrop patterns Look – there must be a million tiny pools Listen – they are pitter-pattering of peace (Are they distorting my vision?) I dreamt of that angel again The one with soulful, engaging eyes… Beautiful eyes filled with hope of passion fulfilled Teared with the memory of past hurt Arms crossed, to shield her tender heart from… ​(Me?) I close my eyes The angel’s arms are open She takes me in her arms to a place The place where picture postcards are born (I believe it is heaven) In heaven she gives me a gift She fills my heart with Christmas swans She crosses her arms again (Those eyes, those mesmerizing eyes…) And I awake To the peaceful pitter-pattering of raindrops… Terry Hamer, Christmas 2000, Nanaimo

I didn’t plan it. That’s how I know it was real. Crying had always been something I managed— contained, timed, redirected. A private maintenance ritual. Something done in bathrooms, in cars, with the door locked and the face composed before returning to the world. That day, none of that happened. The tears came without asking permission. Without warning. Without the usual calculation of who might see and what it might cost me. My body moved faster than my habits. Faster than the training that said hold it together, fear makes you less credible, emotion is something you clean up after. I remember thinking, briefly, This is going to change how I’m seen. And then realizing— something in me was already done protecting that version of myself. No one rushed to fix it. No one looked away. The room didn’t collapse. It stayed… ordinary. That surprised me more than the tears. I had always believed exposure was dangerous. That once seen, I’d lose leverage. Authority. Ground. But the opposite happened. Nothing was taken from me. Nothing dissolved. What disappeared was the effort. The effort of holding my breath through life. The effort of making strength visible instead of letting it be felt. I cried without hiding it, and something older than pride settled in my chest. Relief, maybe. Or recognition. “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) Two words. No explanation. No apology. No lesson wrapped around it. Just witness. He didn’t justify the tears. Didn’t spiritualize them. Didn’t wait until He was alone. He let grief be seen— and the world did not end. Neither did I. That was the first time I understood that composure is not the same as strength, and vulnerability isn’t collapse. Sometimes it’s permission. To stop performing survival. To let the body tell the truth the mouth was never taught how to say. I didn’t cry to be understood. I cried because hiding had finally stopped working. And for the first time, I stayed.

We stood outside the building by the smoking area. You leaned against the railing,one boot hooked around the bar at the bottom. Every few seconds a car passed and your eyes tracked it without your head moving. You kept your hands busy— took your phone out, put it back, rubbed your thumb along the edge of the case like you were checking for a seam. When someone laughed behind us, you flinched just enough to notice, then nodded as if nothing happened. You told me about work. About nothing in particular. While you talked, a delivery truck backfired down the street. You stopped mid-sentence, jaw tight, waited a beat, then finished the thought like the pause hadn’t been there. At one point you asked what time it was. I answered. You checked your watch anyway. When we said goodbye, you shook my hand twice— once firm, then again, lighter, like you’d forgotten to let go. You walked to your car, scanned left, scanned right, opened the door, and only then exhaled.