Poetry in the Paige Parker Mysteries

My first poem was published when I was just 11 years old under a pen name that I thought was really clever. That was in 2005. Now, it’s 2024 and my love for poetry is as strong as ever. It’s a great way to express yourself without having to write it all out exactly as it happened. Sometimes it can be hard to write down the facts of the situation and with poetry, you only have to write down how it feels.

What is poetry?

As a teenager, I loved the Crank series where Ellen Hopkins writes each page as a poem. It literally blew my mind when I read that book and it redefined poetry for me. While that book (and the history behind it) is complicated, the point stands that it reframed poetry in my mind. Now, poetry is not just something I have to memorize and recite in front of my class, it’s a way of telling stories. It’s important.

While my books don’t include poetry within the paragraphs, each chapter heading is a line in a poem.

The Disappearance

This poem is from the first book in the Paige Parker Mysteries, The Disappearance of Susannah Dane. Each number refers to the chapter where that line of the poem is the header.

It All Falls, 1
Into the Fray, 2
Through the Woods, 3
Deep in the Bay, 4
Secrets are Kept, 5
Sideways They Lay, 6
Deeper They Sink, 7
Into the Bay, 8
Heaven Rains Down, 9
It’s in Your Eyes, 10
Do You Love Me, 11
Or is it Demise, 12
It Crosses the Bridge, 13
No Turning Back, 14
It’s Quiet and Meek, 15
Yet Raucous and Rowdy, 16
It’s Calm and Heady, 17
And Lowly and Weak, 18
The Fronds are all Blowing, 19
Soft in the Breeze, 20
I Feel I’m Slipping, 21
Lost on My Knees, 22
It’s All Blood, 23
And Broken, 24
It’s Porous and Lean, 25
It’s Falling, 26
And Falling Still, 27
It Will Never Be Clean, 28
It Rounds the Corner, 29
But I Know, 30
We all Fall Eventually 31

The Absence

In my author’s note at the back of the second book, The Absence of Aurelia Perez, I wrote:

“Each line in the poem represents a chapter title. I’m a poetry nerd, so I love to sneak poetry into stories wherever I can. With these books, I try to write a poem that, if you read them all at once, you would have a clue as to how the book will end. With The Disappearance of Susannah Dane, the poem turned into a song that Owen wrote from for Zeze. If you are also a poetry nerd, I hope that you like following the little rabbit trail of clues in each chapter title and in the poetry itself.”

I’d Rather Be Dead, 1
As Good as Gone, 2
I’m Sinking Instead, 3
My Body Was Wrong, 4
I’m Home in my Head, 5
He’s Singing My Song, 6
Lift Me Up, 7
Tuck Me In, 8
Hold Me Down, 9
Hide My Sin, 10
I’d Rather Be Lost, 11
As Good as Goodbye, 12
I’m Still On My Own, 13
He’s Home in My Mind, 14
I’m Dying to Try, 15
I’m Singing That Song, 16
Rising Up, 17
Fighting On, 18
Lay Me Right, 19
Shoot Me Down, 20
I’ve Gone So Far, 21
Still Here After All, 22
I’m Leaning In Close, 23
At The End of the Fall. 24
I’d Rather Be Here, 25
Than Not Loved at All, 26
I’m Steering Clear, 27
He’s Playing My Song, 28

The third book in the series, The Boy We All Forgot, is still being released. But here is a sneak peek at (most) of the poem:

We were bright, 1
Casting Shadows, 2
Blooms of light, 3
Before our hearts broke, 4
We were glistening, 5
Craving more, 6
Everything good, 7
Crumbled like that, 8
Everything sweet, 9
Tasted and spat, 10
Before my world ended, 11
I was invincible, 12
I was unleashed, 13
He was everything, 14
And there you were, 15
Losing me, 16
Desperately, 17
But I lost it all, 18
Everything that came before, 19

I’m not going to include the final lines from this poem (for fear of some spoilers) but you officially have a sneak peek!

You can read The Boy We All Forgot on Kindle Vella. The first 10 episodes (chapters) are free to read, right in the Amazon Kindle app.