Author's Note

Jonathan Valania

Dear Reader,

Before you go any further, I want to tell you what this book holds, because some of what you’ll read here might hurt.

This collection contains explicit depictions of domestic violence, emotional abuse, spiritual manipulation, gaslighting, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation. There are scenes that recount physical assaults, including strangulation, as well as moments of deep psychological torment. These aren’t dramatized. They’re memories. And while I’ve done my best to write them with care, I didn’t write them gently.

Because what happened wasn’t gentle.

For years, I lived in a silence so loud it cracked me from the inside out.

I was abused by someone the world told me couldn’t hurt me.

I was called a liar. A monster. A man too big to be broken.

But I was broken. Quietly. Repeatedly.

And no one came.

This book was never supposed to exist. It started as scraps: court documents, voicemails, memories scribbled in the margins of trauma. I didn’t write these poems to be read. I wrote them because I didn’t know how else to survive.

I didn’t write Letters I’ll Never Send for shock. I didn’t write it for closure. I wrote it because, for years, I didn’t believe men like me were allowed to speak. I was a husband. A father. A man. And I was told I should be stronger. Quieter. Better. I was told that what happened to me couldn’t be real, because the world doesn’t always believe a man can be broken like this.

But I was broken. And I was afraid. And I was alone.

So I wrote.

Not to prove anything.

But to survive it.

This book is not a manual. It’s not a solution. It’s a record. A reckoning. A long, hard look at how someone can lose themselves piece by piece until the day they decide to stop giving those pieces away.

These poems won’t fix anything.

They won’t make it fair.

They won’t make it make sense.

But they are honest.

They are what happened.

And if you see yourself in them, whether as a survivor, a parent, a partner, or just someone trying to make sense of their own silence, I hope you find something here that speaks to you.

I hope you find something that says:

You’re not crazy.

You’re not weak.

You’re not alone.

Survival is sacred.

And so are you.

This isn’t a story of perfect escape. It’s a story of messy survival.

And if no one has told you this lately:

You are worthy of safety.

You are allowed to leave.

You are allowed to stay gone.

You are not the things they did to you.