Bio…
My name is Carol Anne Johnson, it is a pen name, I am 45 years old, I am from Ireland. I am a survivor of child abuse, and I am diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and complex PTSD, I write a blog therapybits
I write many styles of poetry. I also enjoy reading, volunteering, and good coffee.
My poems…
The heart drums louder than reason,
a storm builds where silence should rest,
the air tightens around my breath.
A storm builds where silence should rest,
whispers echo, sharp and endless,
each thought a blade against the skin.
The air tightens around my breath,
turning minutes into mountains,
stretching shadows into hours.
Whispers echo, sharp and endless,
the heart drums louder than reason,
the air tightens around my breath.
The kettle whistles, sharp and sudden, and my chest tightens as if the sound is a siren meant for me alone. I freeze mid-step, breath shallow, until I remind myself: kitchen, tea, morning. Still, my palms are damp, my heart a drum. The world insists it’s safe—sunlight through curtains, a neighbor’s laugh drifting in—but my body doesn’t listen. It remembers things I don’t want it to. So I move carefully, slow as if crossing ice. I pour the water, hands trembling, and tell myself I’m here, now. Sometimes survival looks like tea, cooling in a chipped mug.
I am a house with too many doors,
each one painted a different color
by hands I sometimes recognize,
sometimes don’t.
Inside, the voices live—
not as echoes,
but as tenants
with their own laughter,
their own silences,
their own ways of walking through the world.
Some days I wake to the softness of one voice,
a caretaker folding the sheets of my mind.
Other days,
I stumble through the wreckage of another’s anger,
walls rearranged,
memories thrown like furniture.
People ask me, who are you?
and I wish I could answer cleanly,
as if a single name
were enough to hold this shifting constellation.
I am not broken glass,
I am a kaleidoscope.
The light bends differently each time you turn it,
but the colors are still mine—
all mine—
even if the patterns refuse to stay.
To live here is to negotiate
with strangers who are not strangers,
to learn that survival sometimes
means handing the wheel to another pair of hands.
I am the pause between names.
I am the chorus in a single throat.
I am the quiet agreement:
we will keep each other alive.
