I spent years trying to outrun myself.
Racing, panting, hiding.
Taking the back roads,
creating hollow shadows.Grasping at survival.
Moving fast enough
that the ghosts
couldn’t quite catch me.But what I didn’t know
was they were wearing my face.And sooner or later
every road ended
with me.-Mandy Ricks
Those that walked before us were not heroes.
Just people trying to survive.
Some broke, healed, or did a bit of both.
They carried grief.
Made mistakes.
Loved imperfectly.Still, they kept going.
Maybe that is the real inheritance.
Not perfection.
-Mandy Ricks
A few lines from my daughter, EJ.
“And that’s what makes both sides human
There was never a battle to be fought
No lines in the sand to be drawn
Just two sides of the same coin
That if they let it, the tide would take and wash away regardless.”
Time arrives uninvited,
bringing fear and too many questions.
It feels as if the love in your heart is cracking, splintering.But before you crumble,
look up one more time.There are still things reaching for you:
hope, strength, small impossible moments
that refuse to die quietly.Grab onto them.
Clutch them like a lifeline.Because fear is loud,
but it is not always right.And sometimes love carries us
through one more night
than we thought we could survive.-Mandy Ricks
This poem is for my daughter Samantha and her precious cat Pebbles. She has had Pebbles for sixteen years, since she was a child, and sadly today he is very sick.
We’re all hoping for the best and clutching onto all the love and hope we can.
-Mandy
Life is hard,
cruel.
Scars never stop aching.
But a point in time comes
where survival hardens into something dangerous —
something that gets back up-bleeding,
smoke in its lungs,
determined to set fire
to anything that tries to bury it again.
-Mandy Ricks
People called her difficult
without ever knowing what she had survived.They saw sharp edges,
but not the hidden shaking,
the resentment burning low in her chest.She learned to hide it all behind polite smiles
and half-finished replies.There were nights she stayed alive out of nothing but spite.
Days she moved through ordinary conversations
while entire sections of her were quietly collapsing behind the walls.Still,
she kept something alive in herself.Not hope.
Not happiness.Just a small stubborn refusal
to become as cold as the people who hurt her.And honestly,
that probably saved her life.-Mandy Ricks
Change never arrives gently.
It carves through you slowly
until one day
it catches you
mid-sentence, mid-cigarette, mid-grief—and you realize
the person staring back
no longer looks easy to destroy.—
-Mandy Ricks
Cars moved.
Coffee steamed behind the glass.
Somewhere, someone laughed too loudly.
The old man kept walking toward the shop,
carrying all his winters at once.-Mandy Ricks
In a square of sand beneath a watching sky,
two boys kneel while kingdoms cry.
Leo shapes with open hands, low, wide walls that welcome lands.
His gates unlatched, his edges kind—no need to guard what’s shared in mind.
Don cuts hard with heel and fist, a higher throne, a tighter grip.
His towers climb on narrowed ground, each grain a thing to stake and crown.
They do not speak. They do not meet.
Their borders press beneath their feet.
A restless wind that takes no side moves through their work, but passes by.
Leo mends the broken, and smiles as sand heals the fray.
Don strikes at every chance, even if it won’t give way.
And still they build, as children do—one builds for many, one for few.
-Mandy Ricks
Sometimes the day doesn’t arrive all at once.
It slips in quietly—through the edge of a curtain, the hum of something ordinary, the pause between thoughts.
I used to think I had to meet the day with intention, with purpose, with something to prove.
Now I’m learning to just notice it instead.
The way light rests on a surface.
The way a moment passes without asking anything from me.
Maybe that’s enough.
Maybe some days aren’t meant to be built or fixed or understood.
Maybe they’re just meant to be witnessed.
-Mandy Ricks
Some take risks without hesitation, others don’t dare.
It’s cold enough, my legs ache again. Maybe I just can’t stand it today.
This morning I sang along to American Pie. That counted for something.
Dancing in the gym sounds fine to me, though I haven’t decided yet.
When it’s the end, does it still count if the fat lady took Ozempic and isn’t fat anymore?
Listening counts. Being heard matters.
-Mandy Ricks
For the first time in decades
I sit in my house, empty, alone.
It feels okay.
No distracting chatter,
or thoughts.
Just quiet.
Who’d have known this peace
would finally arrive today
of all days.-Mandy Ricks
Mandy Ricks 