Jade Erickson
CONTACT:
Email: jadeericksonn@gmail.com
BIO: I am a poet drawn to themes of time, absence, and the body’s quiet resilience. I write to make sense of what time has taken and what it refuses to give back. My work explores grief, relationships, trauma, and what remains after. This page is a record of survival, reclaiming identity, and saying the things I didn’t get to say out loud. Poetry has helped me navigate life by giving language to what is often left unspoken.
Poetry
A Poet’s Tongue
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.
The Company I Keep
I took my shadow on a walk with me
Every light we passed it would disappear,
just to accompany me again.
It spoke only in silence—
words only I could hear.
It knew the rhythm of my limp
The ache I carry like a second heartbeat,
And the pain that made each step heavy as I walked.
It tried pulling me back
to places I thought I'd already escaped.
So as I stumbled, it stumbled with me
We tripped on every crack in the sidewalk
And argued over who got to lead.
While we were separate,
We were stitched together
by light, darkness, and silence.
I knew it was tired of carrying my weight,
It dragged behind me,
heavy with old secrets and pain.
As we journeyed, passing buildings, trees, and people
I'd see it stretch beyond me—
pointing so far ahead
to a future I couldn't see—
Before coming back to swallow me whole,
Until I don't know where my skin
and my darkness meet.
Shadows are stubborn.
They don't disappear when you look away.
They don't soften when you beg them to.
They will stretch, bend, reshape,
and hold your posture in its image
until you realize you're the one casting it.
My shadow isn't my wounds.
It isn't my enemy.
It is proof that I am living—
proof that I carry both light and darkness,
Leaving something behind
that the light cannot erase.
Even in my breaking,
I refuse to be consumed by my darkness.
If my shadow is still here,
then so am I.
It's simply an echo—
an echo that can only exist
because of the sounds I make.
Let it stretch beyond you,
let it fall behind,
let light and darkness fall where they will,
While in it's company,
refusing to be undone.
Where I walk,
my shadow will follow.
We are as separate as we are whole.
Sometimes grief needs fresh air too.