The Elegy of a Songbird

The Elegy of a Songbird is a raw and intimate poetry collection that traces a life shaped by grief, survival, addiction, love, and reclamation. Moving through memory like a series of open doors, these poems speak in the voices of the wounded, the watchful, and the enduring-of daughters and mothers, ghosts and survivors, lovers and children left behind.

With unflinching clarity, Rhiana Jewell explores trauma and recovery, self-destruction and self-mercy, the long echo of abuse, the quiet labor of healing, and the fierce love that makes survival possible. These poems do not ask to be read gently; they ask to be witnessed. From confessional reckonings to moments of startling tenderness, the collection charts the slow, hard work of choosing life again and again.

This is a book for anyone who has lived through pain and learned to carry it-carefully, defiantly, honestly. An elegy not only for what was lost, but for what remains: a voice, a breath, a song still being sung.