Gather Light: Balancing Vulnerability with Growing Strength

Gather Light follows the breaking of silence with the tender, everyday labor of repair. These poems linger in the hush after rupture and listen for what answers back: the first unguarded laugh, a hand steadying a cup, sunlight pooling on a kitchen floor. Attuned to small daily victories and beginnings that almost hide inside ordinary moments, the collection honors how support arrives in unexpected places—through a neighbor's nod, a late-night DJ, a text at the right hour, the soft insistence of a tree outside the window. The voice is gentler now, luminous without denying what it has survived. Vulnerability becomes a form of strength, and steadiness grows from attention as much as from courage. The poems move from ember to dawn to day, tracing the slow work of relearning trust, the body's quiet thaw, the making of a room into a home, the return of appetite, song, and choice. Water, windows, and the soft industry of hands recur like a tide; fireflies, lighthouses, and kintsugi glint at the edges, reminding us that fracture can hold light. Throughout, the book keeps time with its signature pulse—each poem beginning or bowing out on the promise: A light returns…—so that by the final page the reader feels the truth of it in their own chest: healing is not a single triumph, but a practice of noticing how the light gathers.