Genomes and Lies
I learned how to flinch
from a woman who swore she
was nothing like him.
She said it like a spell—
“I’m not my father. I’m nothing like him.”
But her fury had the same pitch,
and when she slammed the door,
the walls remembered his hands.
Worn
The silence we shared
wasn’t peace, but survival.
You blink, you get hit.
We learned to move carefully,
as if noise alone could trigger disaster.
I stopped crying first.
She stopped asking why.
By then, it wasn’t silence.
It was strategy.
The kind you pass down
like recipes and old clothes.
Inheritance
His hands in my face.
Not his touch, but the echo—
hers, when she denied.
It wasn’t just him.
It was the story she told after.
How I was “too sensitive.”
How “he meant well.”
She scrubbed the truth until it looked
like memory.
But my body never forgot.
Heather Kays is a St. Louis–based poet and author. Her memoir Pieces of Us examines her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction, and her young adult novel Lila’s Letters explores healing through unsent letters. Her debut poetry collection, Myths in the Feed, sold out six times in three months, making her Crying Heart Press’s best-selling author. She was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in 2025. Heather runs The Alchemists, an online writing group and creative community, and is drawn to stories that explore survival, identity, and the complexity of being human. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Chiron Review, The Literary Underground, The Rye Whiskey Review, SHINE Poetry Series, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Her new chapbook titled ‘Genomes and Lies‘ is available now from Cajun Mutt Press.
These poems are just lovely.