“Change can be so constant that you don’t even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don’t know that your life is better or worse until it is. Or it can just blow you away, make you something different in an instant.” -Mark Andrus
 
There is a house
and in that house
some small things
that you rescued
from the fire
and in that fire
a few parts of you
that had to go
and in that going
the only you
you’ve ever been
without the dark
that was never
really yours
to begin with
someone handed you
a bag of dark
when you were too young
to know to fill it with light
too young to own the house
you’re now in, all yours
at long last
a room untouched
by fire, a soft and even
floor, moonlight through
the pines and a soft breeze
calling, can’t you hear it? your true name

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor (along with Elisabeth Horan & Amy Alexander) of the anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2019). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and prison/confinement. His work can be found in Yes, Poetry, The Collidescope and Isacoutic*. He resides in upstate New York.