Portfolio
Selected poetry, publications, collaborations, and creative work by Jade Erickson

I breathe my truth into existence,

Though every breath feels like betrayal.

A pattern I have created and despised,

While quietly longing to watch it unfold.

Instability carries me like a vessel at sea,

Rising and falling with the restless tides,

As if I were born to these waves,

Waiting to be claimed by their depths.

I am every fragment of myself —

Every shadow, every glow,

Each piece keeping me afloat.

I survived by refusing to divide myself.

I now meet fate without resistance,

Letting myself drift, yet not drown,

At peace within the endless waters —

The vastness no longer asks me to grow.

Flashbacks are like ghosts in daylight—

they look familiar, but each moment is smudged.

like a dream drenched in reality,

folding time like hospital sheets

and wearing my skin like a costume.

I get stitched into a moment 

that feels both weathered and immediate,

Unable to speak or swallow it down.

My voice belongs to the moments that broke me,

the moments that mock me 

with voices I want to forget—

like I'm stuck inside a memory 

that forgot it was over.

Memories that lie with a poet's tongue—

So beautifully composed, 

I almost mistook it for comfort.

If compassion could replace
the ink in my pen,
if I could materialize these words,
I would write, ‘Mother’
in every open space.

In every line,
I would shape memories
into moments I could visit,
carrying her warm laughter
through every sentence.

Then I would realize,
her voice was laced
into my words all along,
breathing language
into every story I tell.

Now I gently turn the page,
and find her waiting there.