Sharing one of my poems featured in my upcoming book “As I Come” by Emily Adams
i was eight years old the first time
i begged god
for silence
between the walls whispering
so loudly, it drowned my own thoughts
the screams of my baby brother
echoing throughout the house
and my fathers anger
creaking the floor board
my mind had come unraveled by age ten
my father was gone, but the floorboards still creak
and somehow my brother hasn’t aged at all
my mother asks me to soothe him
but im afraid id squeeze him too tight
we sat down to eat in the kitchen one night
i placed the baby in his high chair
besides my mother and I,
and he was finally silent—
but cold to the touch.
i thanked my mother for dinner
but she couldn’t speak.
her head hit the table,
and her body followed
i kept eating
and the walls kept whispering
when I was done,
I went to the backyard
and joined my father beneath the sycamore tree
where he looked up at me from the cold ground
I think this was the first time,
we ever understood each other
— Emily Adams, from As I Come “secrets of the floorboards“
emily unfiltered 