Life Line explores the subtle nature of abuse that isn’t outwardly understood or spoken about. It captures the high’s and low’s of unhealthy relationships. As I wrote more about trauma, toxic relationships, I realized how abuse can effortlessly mimic love. Emotional and mental wounds are rarely seen, but we feel them immensely.
“I crave a love that feels safe” speaks to how love and pain are often seen as one in the same. When the only love we get is tainted with so much agony, what does it truly become? How do we define love? How do we trust ourselves to really understand love? In the moment when something doesn’t feel right, it’s incredibly difficult to put that emotion into words, especially when we normalize abusive behaviours as love.
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Life Line isn’t healing. This book will not hold your hand, but it will help you realize your emotions. I hope that it teaches you that what you went through is the beginning of your healing and will one day culminate into what you truly deserve. Importantly, I want readers to tolerate nothing less than what they deserve.
This preview of poems from Life Line highlight betrayal. I think the deepest betrayals that leave the most painful scars are often the ones that transform us. Ironically, betrayal is one of the most hurtful feelings, yet it often comes from the people you love and trust the most. Emotions have infinite layers, and nothing is ever black or white. Life Line is a study on what is meant to stay and what is meant to go away in our lives.
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Page 95
what hurt me the most was
when I managed to take the
knife out from my back–
it wasn’t the pain of it all
it was that I never thought you’d be the one
with my blood on your hands
I trusted you
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Page 46
when I feel pain, I feel it till it destroys me
like a tormented cyclone
taking over the land from the sea
my pain is a wrath, seeking havoc
a mind of its own, it controls me
I pour, I destroy, I cry
like a waterfall thrashing a thousand feet
into a bed of rocks
when I feel, I feel
pain claims the world in me
I claim the world before me
I feel what I need to
so it no longer destroys me
I control it before it controls me
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Page 157
I crave a love that feels safe
You can get your own copy of Shyanah’s poetry book, Life Line, on Amazon. Follow her Instagram to keep up with her upcoming projects and get a daily dose of her poetry.
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