18+PoemAfter the Engagement Ended
A woman returns the gifts, cancels the hall and rewrites her future after a broken engagement, and finds herself still standing.
1 min read · content note
The card catalogue
Find a writing
20 writings on these shelves · names withheld
Personal Trauma · 10
The Poetry Shelf
Grief, healing and survival, in free verse, ghazals, lists and couplets.
18+Poem
18+PoemThe Year I Stayed
A man looks back on the year depression told him to leave, and lists the small, stubborn reasons he stayed, and is glad he did.
2 min read · content note
18+PoemPanic: A Field Guide
A prose poem written as a nature guide to the panic attack: its habits, its habitat, and how one woman learned to wait it out.
2 min read · content note
18+PoemTwo Houses
In couplets, an adult looks back at growing up between two homes after a divorce, and the things that got lost in the car between them.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemLunchbox
A grown man remembers the schoolyard bullying over his mother's home-cooked lunch, and the day he finally opens the lunchbox with pride.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemThe Key I Still Carry
A displaced woman carries the key to a house that may no longer stand, and describes each room it still opens in her memory.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemChemo Ward, Tuesday
Tuesday afternoons on a chemotherapy ward: the drip, the strangers who become friends, and a small joke that keeps everyone alive.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemThings My Body Remembers
A survivor of an abusive relationship maps what her body still remembers years later, and what it is slowly learning instead.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemGhazal for the Voice on the Old Phone
A ghazal in couplets for a brother whose voice survives only on an old phone's answering message.
1 min read · content note
18+PoemInventory After the Funeral
A list poem counting what a daughter finds in her mother's house after the funeral, and the one thing that cannot be counted.
1 min read · content noteNothing on this shelf matches.
Personal Trauma · 10
The Story Shelf
True-to-life stories of loss, illness, leaving and staying, told without a name.
18+StoryThe Woman Who Forgets My Name
A son caring for his mother through dementia learns to meet her wherever she is in time, even when she no longer knows who he is.
6 min read · content note
18+StoryRoom B, Thursdays
A woman who swore she would never speak at a survivors' support group finds her voice in a borrowed room with bad tea and good people.
6 min read · content note
18+StoryThe Other Half of the Song
A woman who lost her twin sister in an accident cannot sing the duet they always performed together, until a stranger at a wedding asks her to.
5 min read · content note
18+StorySundays at My Father’s
An adult son keeps visiting his estranged, recovering father every Sunday, learning slowly how to sit in the same room as the past.
5 min read · content note
18+StoryWhat the Class Photo Doesn’t Show
At a twenty-year school reunion, a man comes face to face with the boy who bullied him, and discovers neither of them remembers it the same way.
5 min read · content note
18+StoryThe Follow-Up Scan
One year after finishing cancer treatment, a woman waits through the longest morning of her life for the results of her follow-up scan.
6 min read · content note
18+StoryThe Language of Bread
A refugee mother who cannot speak her new country's language opens a tiny bakery, and her bread says what she cannot.
5 min read · content note
18+StoryPlatform Nine
A man who has not ridden the commuter train in two years after a panic attack sets out to travel one station, with a stranger's unexpected help.
5 min read · content note
18+StorySmall Print
A year after leaving a controlling marriage, a woman opens her first bank account in her own name and learns to read her own life again.
5 min read · content note
18+StoryThe Sweater
Eight months after her husband's death, a widow finally opens his wardrobe, and one old sweater refuses to be given away.
5 min read · content noteNothing on this shelf matches.
The 18+ desk
Is there something you have carried alone?
Send a poem or story to the 18+ desk and choose Personal Trauma. Your name is never shown on this shelf; only the TPL team sees who sent it.
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