✨ MissT Writes

I am not one thing.

I am not just the woman who survived,

or the woman who fell apart,

or the woman who loved men

with broken hinges

and weather warnings stitched into their sleeves.

I am not just the mother

counting coins, cooking tea,

filling the car, the cupboards, the silence,

filling everybody else

while wondering who, exactly,

was meant to fill me.

I am soft in places

people mistook for weakness.

I am sharp in places

where I had to grow teeth.

I have loved too hard.

Gone back when I should have gone home.

Answered messages I should have buried.

Fed addictions that were not mine.

Carried men like wounded birds

until their claws left proof.

I have spent money

I needed for peace.

Missed the small walks

back to myself.

Slept through evenings.

Cried over men with no map

for the country of me.

I have wanted saving.

I have wanted worship.

I have wanted someone to look at me

and say,

There you are.

I have been looking for you

all my life.

But I have also saved myself

more times than anyone saw.

I have sat in cars

with my heart in pieces

and still driven home.

I have stood in kitchens

with grief in my throat

and still fed my children.

I have gone to work

when my soul was barefoot.

I have laughed

when life had the nerve

to be ridiculous.

I have written my way out

of rooms with no doors.

MissT was not born from ease.

She clawed her name

from the rubble,

put lipstick on the wound,

and called it literature.

Divorced.

Damaged.

Dangerous.

Not because I am ruined,

but because I know

what ruins look like now,

and I refuse to decorate them

for anyone else.

I am the daughter

who wanted love

without earning it.

The woman

who still looks back at storms

because even thunder

can sound like home

when you have lived inside it

long enough.

I am the mother

who worries, rages, rescues,

then wonders why she is tired.

I am the grandmother

with softness still blooming

in the bruised garden.

I am the driver.

The chief cook.

The midnight thinker.

The woman with ten tabs open

in her head

and one battered little soapbox

facing the world.

I am bad decisions

and beautiful instincts.

I am debt letters and dreamwork.

Tea bags, petrol fumes,

wet Welsh roads,

and a heart

that keeps sending up flares.

I am the woman

who has been blamed

for weather she did not make.

The woman

who mistook chaos for passion,

attention for love,

need for devotion.

But I am learning.

I am learning

that love is not supposed

to cost me my pulse.

I am learning

that forgiveness

does not mean handing someone

the knife again.

I am learning

that leaving

can be an act of mercy.

For them.

For me.

For the girl inside me

who waited too long

for someone to come back kind.

I am all of it.

The ache.

The bite.

The bad choices.

The brave mornings.

The poems.

The payments.

The panic.

The power.

I am not clean-cut.

I am not easy.

I am not small enough

to be convenient anymore.

I am Tracey.

I am MissT.

I am the woman

who drove through hell

with mascara on the dashboard

and grief in the passenger seat,

then looked the devil dead in the eye

and said,

Move over.

I don’t feel liked.

Not really.

From my mother’s sharp mouth

to the friends who smile kindly,

nod softly,

then drift sideways out of reach.

My best friend came to all my weddings.

Every hopeful beginning.

Every version of me

dressed in white and trying again.

And when she married the second time,

I didn’t go.

The man I was with didn’t want to.

We lived an hour away.

Life became awkward, busy, complicated

in all the ordinary ways

that quietly harden into permanence.

Now I carry it like a stone in my pocket.

Because I wish, with all my heart,

that I had gone.

We drifted after that.

Not through shouting

or slammed doors.

Just the slow erosion

of people who stop showing up

for each other.

Time changed shape.

We stopped calling as much.

Stopped knowing

the newest versions of ourselves.

And sometimes I sit with the ache of it

and wonder why.

Why do people become strangers

when once they felt unbreakable?

My other best friend became

a different kind of grief.

Anger.

Misunderstandings.

Lies moving like smoke

through old friendships.

She told someone from school things about me,

and that friend erased me

with the tap of a thumb.

Then death arrived before repair could.

So there is no final conversation now.

No clearing of the air.

No chance to discover

maybe we both got it wrong.

Just silence

with a gravestone attached to it.

Then the house emptied further.

My son moved out,

and the echo of him

still lingers in the hallway.

Now the perimeter has shrunk to two:

just me and Kee.

But the quiet isn’t peace.

It sits in the mouldy dishes,

the stale smoke,

the humiliation still clinging to the walls.

Your underwear photographed.

Your car keys hidden

like a childish little punishment.

Stranded in your own life.

Policed inside your own skin.

And then the final rupture:

watching my home smashed apart.

But broken plaster and splintered wood

are only the visible shape of betrayal.

I have been cruel at times.

Sharp-tongued. Defensive.

Capable of burning bridges

while still standing on them.

But sometimes you burn the bridge

because the person on the other side

is already striking matches

inside the house.

And regret is a terrible thing.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just a ghost sitting quietly

at the end of the bed,

asking you to replay old scenes

with different endings.

I speak to my mother again now,

though even that feels strange.

Like visiting a childhood home

after strangers have lived there for years.

We speak carefully,

like people learning each other’s weather.

She said she was cold.

I said, “I’m okay.”

And she laughed lightly and said,

“That’s because you’ve got all that fat on you.”

Such a small sentence.

So quickly spoken.

But some words do not land on the skin.

They land in the child

still living underneath it.

And maybe that is what sensitivity is.

Not weakness.

Not drama.

Just years of carrying

every careless word,

every violation,

every broken room,

without ever being taught

where to safely put them down.

I did not carry you

for nine months

to one day stand trembling

in my own kitchen

afraid of your temper.

That is the sentence

no mother rehearses.

Because before the slammed words,

before the cigarette ash by the doorway,

before girls and chaos

and plates left fossilised in the sink,

there was you.

Tiny socks on radiators.

Cartoons before school.

A feverish forehead against my neck.

Your small hand wrapped around one finger

like I was the safest thing

in the world.

And maybe that is the cruelty of motherhood.

The child never fully leaves your eyes,

even when the man arrives carrying storms.

I know you are hurting.

I know the world feels too loud

inside your head sometimes.

I know love has made you reckless,

defensive,

desperate to prove yourself grown.

But this house has become a battlefield

where I apologise for existing

under a roof I hold together.

And somewhere between

the rent,

the lifts,

the food,

the rescuing,

the forgiving,

I disappeared.

People will say,

“He’s only young.”

And they are right.

But I am somebody too.

A mother, yes,

but also a woman

with nerves worn thin as old wires,

trying to survive her own life

without being shouted down inside it.

So tomorrow

when the furniture moves

it will not mean

I stopped loving you.

It will mean

I finally started loving myself enough

to stop living like a guest

in my own home.

And God,

that is the part

​A day.

A night.

Years spent looking after you.

Creams for your eczema.

Rubbing your back.

Massages.

Endless cups of coffee.

Boxes of wine,

four bottles at a time,

carried home

like offerings.

​Those endless looks of disgust.

Wishing you’d wash

the blood from your clothes.

Boils weeping through your skin.

The ripe smell of infection.

As though death himself

had started knocking.

​Vodka setting fire

to the streetlamps.

Wine trickling

into your eyes.

Cracked, flaky hands

wrapped around a glass.

Your breath rising

from your nostrils

like mist over a meadow.

​You sit beside me

already half-gone.

There’s always something there to remind me

even when the world forgets my name,

a needle in the velvet of memory

playing the same old, aching game.

I was a Puppet on a String, darling,

pulled through glitter and consequence,

smiling for the cameras, learning

how love can be elegant nonsense.

Long Live Love, they cried from the balcony,

as I tripped through chords and circumstance,

while Girl Don’t Come whispered quietly

like a door that never gets its chance.

I wore Message Understood like lipstick

smudged on a goodbye letter’s edge,

and danced through Nothing Comes Easy,

balanced on a high wire ledge.

In the corners of Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him,

there’s a jukebox coughing up regret,

and He’s Got the Power turns dimmer

in rooms where I can’t forget.

I’ve been (There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,

a song stuck in a cracked vinyl sky,

where even Tomorrow can’t find me

when yesterday learns how to lie.

I’ll Stop at Nothing, said the echo,

but nothing ever stopped for me,

just Think It All Over in slow motion

beneath a borrowed melody.

And still I sing, barefoot in the ruins

of choruses that won’t let go—

a girl made of refrains and turning moons,

half spotlight, half shadow show.

Because love, like a Sandie Shaw record,

keeps spinning when the needle’s gone,

and every ending hums a reminder:

the song was you all along.

She wears her kindness like a coat,

buttoned high around each note,

every word just trimmed and neat…

yet something doesn’t quite sit right in the heat.

Her eyes don’t match the things she says,

they flicker sideways through the haze,

measuring, weighing, keeping score,

quiet wars behind the door.

She builds her throne from whispers thin,

lets silence do the heavier sin,

a queen of pauses, loaded air,

where truth goes missing somewhere there.

And oh, she plays the fragile part,

hand to chest, a trembling heart,

but cracks appear if you look twice,

beneath the frost… not quite so nice.

Not loud, not wild, not openly cruel,

she learned a far more subtle rule…

to bend the room without a sound,

and leave you doubting solid ground.

But here’s the thing the mask can’t hide,

no matter how it’s polished, tried…

truth has a way of seeping through,

like rain that finds what’s never new.

And those who see it, really see,

step out of that quiet gravity…

because fake doesn’t break with fire or fight—

In memory’s quiet corridors, where tender echoes dwell,

I see the blue of John’s kind eyes, an ancient, tranquil spell.

Strawberry-blonde, that piercing gaze a warmth time can’t conceal,

Though buried deep within the past, such kindness still I feel.

Through oceans crossed for others’ sake, through love that went unearned,

I stand unbroken, still I give, though hard the lessons learned.

In churches old and steeples high, my spirit wanders free,

For even in the shadowed hours, no bitterness holds me.

Gran, with gentle hands, we baked and shared,

Rock cakes and fresh bread, moments that we cared.

She always smelled of face powder, and Zambuk on her lips,

In frocks and housecoats, her warmth never slips.

She called me “handsome poppet,” made me feel so special,

And always told me, “shut the front gate,” to keep the draft out, gentle!

We listened to The Archers, and watched Crossroads too,

In every tender memory, your kindness always grew.

Julie, with gentle grace you came, your kindness shaped my soul,

In every act of selfless love, you made my heart feel whole.

Though my mother’s road was lined with pain, no hatred do I hold,

For in this woven life of mine, forgiveness gleams as gold.

And though my father’s presence waned, his love remains my light

A steadfast heart, a working hand, that always did what’s right.

I look to him with reverence, for all the strength he gives,

His legacy, a thread of grace, that through my spirit lives.

And as I weave this tapestry, of joy and grief entwined,

I find within its patterned strands, a peace so gently kind.

For in the lessons time bestows, and in the love I give,

To hurt this much

and keep going

To feel everything

with no filter

To love

without checking

if it’s safe

No regret

To give

when you know

you’re giving more

To feel alive

only when

they’re there

To stay

not because it’s fair

but because something in you

won’t stop choosing them

Because your body believes

their happiness

is the reason

you’re here

To love

To be loved

It feels like enough

And without it

everything

We chase happiness

like it’s waiting at the finish line.

Chase longevity

as if time can be bargained with.

We stack money,

measure health,

dress freedom up in plans and promises.

And still…

time slips through us

like water through open hands.

We say one day

I’ll stop.

I’ll listen to the birds stitching morning into the sky.

I’ll watch the sun rise… and stay long enough to see it fall.

I’ll climb Pen y Fan,

breathe something real into my lungs,

book the getaway,

choose the moment over the excuse.

But one day

is a liar with a gentle voice.

Because in the end

we are not rich in things

but in fragments.

Moments.

Memories.

Half-faded conversations

that echo louder with age.

The laughter from our youth

becomes the blanket we pull over our bones

when the world grows quiet.

So don’t spend your whole life earning a living

and forget to live it.

Don’t fill every hour

until there’s no space left

for the sound of your own soul.

Because one day

you won’t be asking for more money…

or more success…

You’ll be reaching for a moment