This Is Why I Never Left is a queer feminist poetry collection dedicated to ending cycles of abuse and violence. With tenderness and truth, these poems reveal how abuse is not just a personal wound, but a cultural and political one.

This collection examines the stories we’re told about relationships: the myths that teach us to settle for what harms us, to stay silent, to disappear. And it dares to imagine something different—what it might look like to build relationships rooted in safety, in wholeness, and the freedom to be fully ourselves without fear.