CARTOGRAPHY OF VOICE: AN AUTHOR'S METHODOLOGY & WHY I WRITE
I'm a designer by trade, which means I think in structure and systems. But writing didn't start that way for me—it started with necessity. In 2025, after my mother died, the brush went quiet. Words became the only tool I had left that could hold what I needed to say.
I don't write to observe from a distance. I write to intervene—in my own grief, in the silence we're taught to keep, in the isolation that makes survival feel like a private language no one else speaks. Poetry and prose became the way I could name what hurt, what mattered, what I was too scared to say out loud.
These books are maps I made for myself first—hard-earned wisdom I didn't want but needed—then realized someone else might need them too. If you've survived something and don't know how to talk about it yet, maybe these words can be a starting place. Not answers, just company. The kind of map that says: I've been here. You're not alone.
THE FIVE-PHASE PROGRESSION
The Cartography of Voice is a five-phase curriculum I completed in one year. It charts the path from "I survived" to "I witness becoming," moving from individual healing through collective witness to metaphysical transformation.
Phase I: The Excavation (Until Silence Spoke)
Finding authentic voice, creating maps from scar tissue, and treating silence as preparation, not emptiness.
Phase II: The Architecture (After the Last Echo)
Stewarding voice, constructing conscious relationships, and exploring the mathematics of repair over performance.
Phase III: The Intervention (Waiting for Room)
Expanding beyond the self to use poetry as collective service and embracing the radical discipline of hope.
Phase IV: The Witness (American Witness)
A confrontation with Lady Liberty, using Echo-mapping methodology (repetition as sonar) to transform readers into co-witnesses of America's collective trauma.
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
Phase V: The Convergence (Between Breath and Release)
The narrative centers on Ezra, who dies at 24 saving a stranger—hours after learning he was adopted. Set in purgatory, Ezra witnesses two people, Thomas and Grace, rebuilding their love after dying together in a robbery gone wrong. And that's where the real story begins—where witness becomes inheritance, and love becomes matter.
24 poems across 12 dual forms explore love as instruction.
FORMS
SONNETS = containment after chaos
VILLANELLES = trauma that loops
BALLADS = stories that must be told
BLANK VERSE = dramatic dialogue
PROSE POEMS = confession too big for lines
ELEGIES = sacred pace for touching wounds
HAIKU = dailiness of love
ODES = praising the dying
EPIC = love as heroic tragedy
FREE VERSE = revelation without container
CONCRETE = bodies made visual
COMPLETION AND CONTINUATION
This five-book cycle completes the primary narrative arc and objective of the Cartography of Voice. The only planned continuation of this core thesis is a final, sixth phase entitled MEMORY. This requires necessary 5–10 years of lived experience for full integration. Future explorations may include experiments outside the curriculum, such as rhythm-based works or revisiting and revising early works.
