Poetry by Esther Claus The snail, 1/12 collage paintings from the project: What Lives On, Written By Those Who Love You. I refuse to sit in stories that broke me to hold up pain like it still owns me. 
I will not place the past before my feet,
 those old ghosts of shame, anger and defeat. I refuse to be a prisoner
 of someone else’s harm. I refuse to let my story
 be shaped by their sin. 
I am not what happened to me. I am what I chose to become. But the body remembers
 what