She Writes Like I Bleed

By Nelly Vee

I met my daughter again—
not in person first,
but in poetry.
Fifteen years vanished like breath in frost.
She was seven when they took her—
my baby girl,
now twenty-three,
with words that echo wounds I once hid.
In every verse,
I saw myself.
The rage. The rhythm. The rawness.
No one told me she writes.
No one told me she writes like me.
As if absence taught her
the shape of silence.
As if pain passed down
through blood and broken courts
became art.
She writes like I bleed—
unapologetically.
And in her lines,
I learned who she became
without me.
Not a victim.
A vessel.
Of survival. Of fire. Of truth.
Now we sit—father and daughter—
unpacking years in metaphors.
She is my favorite poet.
Not because she found her voice…
but because she found mine, too.