The contents of this book consist of poetry that I wrote while in my teen years and current pencil drawings combined with those poems. At the age of fifteen, I started writing poems as a release from my inner pain. Having no one in my life with whom I could share my deepest feelings, it was only through putting words on paper that I could find a sense of comfort and release. Much of what I’ve written has been lost over the years, but I managed to hold on to some of what I considered my “better” work. Years ago, I typed these old poems into a file on my computer and that is where they’ve been sitting, waiting for what would happen to them next. In the writing of my memoirs, I include these poems where they fit in the timeline of my story. The work in this book began in a most interesting way… The first combination of a drawing around one of my old poems was accidental. It was the day of September 21, 2015, the Saturday before leaving for my nephew’s wedding. All week I’d been coping with anxiety and apprehension because I knew I’d need to deal with facing my mother. The relationship with my mother was always a difficult one. But in June of 2015, we’d had an argument, a final fight where I made the decision that enough was enough and unless she could apologize to me, I would have nothing more to do with her. In the three months after that event, we had not spoken. So, on the morning of the wedding, I found myself recalling the words in one of my poems: The one who gave me life now denies me breath. I’d always believed that I’d written it about a man who I was involved with at that time, but reading these words clearly made me aware that if I took it literally, the one who gave me life was clearly my mother.