The Descent

Why the hardest poem to write had to be the very first page.

original ink by Brandi Lynn

I never planned on writing this book. In fact, for most of my life, writing something this exposed was my absolute worst nightmare.

When you spend 53 years masking, perfecting the art of being fine, being the strong one, the safe one, the person everyone else needs you to be, hiding becomes your survival strategy. You learn how to swallow your own screams so efficiently that you don’t even realize you’re doing it anymore. You build an entire identity out of polite smiles and good mornings, completely unaware of the crushing weight piling up right above your head.

But eventually, the earth comes to collect. Your body, your spirit, your mind, they can only hold up a lie for so long before the ceiling caves in.

When my collapse happened, it wasn’t graceful. It was terrifying. And when I finally started trying to put it into words, I froze. This single poem took me months of sleepless nights. I sat in the dark, staring at the screen, writing and rewriting, deleting entire stanzas because the truth looked too ugly on paper. I kept trying to edit it to make it sound prettier, safer, more poetic, anything to protect myself from the raw reality of my own breakdown.

But I realized that if I was going to publish this book, I couldn’t start it from a place of safety. I couldn’t invite you into a journey of healing while still trying to maintain the illusion that I had it all together.

So, I chose The Descent to open the book. It is my ultimate confession. It is the exact moment the mask shattered, and I finally stopped pretending.

Putting this out into the world feels like standing completely naked in a room full of strangers. But I am sharing it because I know I am not the only one who has built a life out of I am okay. I know there are others out there who are exhausted from holding up a ceiling that wasn’t meant to bear that much weight.

If you are tired of the polite lies, if you are staring at your own fractures, wondering how to breathe through the break, this is for you. This is the moment we stop hiding. Welcome to page 3 of Where the Broken Light Falls.

THE DESCENT

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To enter here is to agree to the physics of the fall. I spent a lifetime perfecting the architecture of the “fine”. I built a house out of “good mornings” and “I’m okay,” unaware that every time I swallowed a scream, I was adding a brick to a ceiling that wasn’t meant to hold that much weight. We are taught that the porcelain is the protection, but it isn’t. It is a debt. And eventually, the earth comes to collect.

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When the light hits a whole thing, it stays on the surface. It is polite; it is a lie. But when the light hits a fracture, it does something violent. It searches for the jagged edges of the marrow. It maps the topography of the snap.

This is the beginning of the undoing. We are going to look at the “bone flowers” blooming in the purple bruises and the way the sugar turns to ash in the furnace of the throat. We are going to catalog the debris until the sugar is reclaimed and the porcelain is stripped away.

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Pay attention to the cracks. They aren’t just where the house died. They are the only places left where the air is honest.

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Take a breath. This is where the broken light falls.

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With grit and grace, Brandi Lynn ♡

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The Beauty of a Switchblade will always be a free space to read and rest. If these words found a home in you, you can hold the physical weight of my journey in your hands. My debut collection of prose-poetry and original illustrations, Where the Broken Light Falls, is now available on Amazon.

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I am Brandi Lynn. Welcome to a beautifully chaotic space for the outliers, the pattern-seekers, and the sensory-overloaded. We aren’t here to watch the healing; we’re here to watch the clockwork fail. If this resonates with you, I’d love to have you stay.

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Find the visual unmasking on Instagram @bybrandilynn, or on my website at ByBrandiLynn.com