Where We Were Free: Poems about Home, Childhood, and Leaving

Where We Were Free is a tender, aching return to the landscapes that raised us-the kitchens warm with morning light, the backyards that held our bravest dreams, the quiet streets we memorized step by step. In this luminous collection, Lora Dickens gathers the fragments of home, childhood, and the long, bittersweet journey of leaving, weaving them into poems that hold both the sharpness of loss and the soft glow of memory.These poems travel across time like small lanterns, illuminating the innocence we once lived in, the discoveries that shaped us, and the departures that remade us. They linger in the corners of old houses, in the laughter caught between siblings, in the scent of rain on warm pavement, and in the tender hush of goodbyes we were never ready to speak. With striking imagery and emotional precision, Dickens explores what it means to grow up, to long for what has passed, and to reconcile with the places that made us who we are.At once nostalgic and forward-looking, Where We Were Free invites readers to sit with their own memories-to honor the echoes of childhood, the wounds of leaving, and the quiet triumph of becoming. These poems remind us that home is never just a place; it is a pulse we carry, a constellation of moments that continues to shape our steps long after we have walked away.For anyone who has ever stood between who they were and who they are becoming, this collection offers companionship, clarity, and the comforting truth that even the roads we leave behind continue to lead us toward ourselves.

Pagina's: 99, Paperback, Independently published