Side Effects May Include

There’s a quiet chaos beneath the surface of healing — the tangled, raw aftermath of trauma, survival, and the body’s stubborn will to keep going. Side Effects May Include was born from that place: the dark spaces where pain bleeds into daily life, where the scars don’t just fade, and where recovery is messy, unpredictable, and sometimes heartbreaking.

This collection is a reckoning with the fallout — the emotional tremors, the ghosts of past violations, and the way our bodies remember what our minds try to forget. It’s a confrontation with rage, bitterness, and sorrow, but also with fierce resilience and the flicker of hope that pushes us forward.

Side Effects May Include speaks to anyone who has felt fractured by their past, who lives with invisible wounds, or who navigates the world carrying pain no one else can see. These poems are confessions, screams, whispers — all the ways we try to make sense of what we’ve been through and reclaim the pieces of ourselves lost along the way.

This is not a gentle book. It’s a survival manual in verse, a raw and honest testament to the complexity of healing. It’s for those ready to face the dark, to scream into the void, and to find their voice amid the chaos.

Because sometimes the side effects are more than just physical — they’re the parts of us we fight hardest to understand and hold onto.