After the testimony ends,
the room empties quickly.
 
Chairs
scrape backward.
Pens click shut.
Someone
thanks me
for my courage
as if it were
a renewable resource.
 
The microphone cools.
My name is no longer needed.
 
No one asks
where the wants go
once they
leave my mouth
how they
circle back,
how they
knock at night,
how they
sit heavy in the ribs
like unanswered mail.
 
I gather
myself slowly,
as if parts of me
were set down
to make the truth clearer.
 
Outside,
the world keeps pace.
Traffic resumes
its ordinary violence.
People cross streets
without knowing
what was said inside,
without needing to.
 
This
is the part
they don’t archive:
the quiet labor of continuing,
the body learning how to hold
what has already been proven.
 
I was believed.
That should have been an ending.
 
Instead,
it became
another beginning
I wasn’t
prepared to narrate
where justice
does not arrive,
only the absence of denial.
 
There is
no applause for this.
No language
sturdy enough
to make the shift.
 
Just breath.
Just weight.
Just the slow work
of living
beyond exposure
carrying the truth
without
setting it down for display.
 
 

My heart
does not break cleanly.
It leaks
slow, deliberate,
through the rib of a pen.
 
I write
when the ache
won’t stay contained,
when feeling
presses so hard
it demands shape.
Ink becomes
the body’s compromise:
pain, translated.
 
The page
receives everything
grief without recoil,
joy without interrogation,
the mess of being alive
and still choosing language.
 
Some nights,
the words
arrive wounded
dragging their knees
across the margin.
Other nights,
they fall open easily
as if the heart
has already learned
where to split.
 
I don’t write to heal.
I write to witness.
To give the hurt
somewhere to land
without turning away.
 
Each line
costs something.
Each stanza
gives it back
not relief,
but recognition.
 
This is how
I survive the overflow:
by letting
the ink bleed first,
by trusting
the page to hold
what my chest cannot
.
If my heart leaks,
let it be onto paper
where even pain
can become legible
and leaving a mark
is proof I was here.

Amari Murray (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based poet with a B.A. in Creative Writing from Purchase College, SUNY. She began writing poetry at eight and published her first poem, in high school. Her work is drawn from personal experiences, rooted in pleasure and pain, silence and voice, intimacy and independence. Through vivid imagery and lyrical rhythm she examines self-discovery, survival, and secrets. She has performed widely with many publications. Currently, she is working on her first poetry manuscript.


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