Kiera Gerety

If my poetry collection had a soundtrack, it wouldn’t be soft. It wouldn’t be sweet. It would be five songs that taste like rust, like smoke, like rain on bare skin. Five songs that burn, ache, beg, and survive.

Ink, Blood, and Prayer was born in the aftermath of a relapse that should’ve killed me. These are poems written in the wreckage, not from the finish line, but from the middle of the fire. It’s a book of sacred survival, a collection of prayers offered with trembling hands, smeared eyeliner, and blood still crusted beneath the nails.

This book doesn’t offer neat answers. It is not a clean redemption arc. It is a reckoning. A prayer. A scream. A survival.

And if it had a soundtrack, it would sound like this:

“Hurt” – Johnny Cash

“I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / The only thing that’s real.”

This one’s the backbone. The blood in the ink. The memory of the night I took nine times the lethal dose and didn’t die. Cash’s voice is tired and honest and full of ghosts. Like he already knows he shouldn’t still be here. That’s what Ink, Blood, and Prayer sounds like, too. Not triumphant. Not rescued. Just… still here. Somehow.

“Take Me to Church” – Hozier

“My lover’s got humor / She’s the giggle at a funeral / Knows everybody’s disapproval / I should’ve worshipped her sooner.”

Hozier doesn’t flinch from the sacred and the profane, and neither do I. This book is a prayer, not to a god who demands purity, but to the gods who sat with me in the dirt. From exploring Seneca religion, to exploring Germanic deities, to settling with just praying to the Universe for guidance. They didn’t ask me to be holy. They just asked me to speak. This song reminds me that prayer can sound like a scream.

“Shake It Out” – Florence + the Machine

“And it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back / So shake him off.”

There’s light in this one. But not the soft kind — it’s the light that comes after walking barefoot through glass. “Shake It Out” is what happens when you’ve been hollowed out and decide to live anyway. I didn’t want to live when I started writing this book.
But somehow, word by word, I started to.

“Fast Car” – Tracy Chapman

“You got a fast car / Is it fast enough so we can fly away? / We gotta make a decision / Leave tonight or live and die this way.”

This one is about the dream of escape, and the way it breaks your heart when the escape isn’t enough. There were years I thought if I just left, the town, the partner, the body, the life: I’d be okay. But pain follows. Addiction follows. Grief doesn’t care about zip codes. Still, I hear this song and remember the version of me that kept trying anyway.

Ink, Blood, and Prayer was my fast car. My way out. Even if it only took me as far as the next breath.

“The Archer” – Taylor Swift

“I’ve been the archer, I’ve been the prey / Who could ever leave me, darling? / But who could stay?”

This one cuts softer, but deeper. It’s about that unbearable tension between shame and the desperate want to be loved anyway.

• Recovery doesn’t fix that feeling.
• Step work doesn’t erase it.

But writing this book helped me sit beside it, gently, like a wound I stopped picking for once.

I don’t always believe I’m worthy. But I wrote like I was.

The Sound of My Survival

These songs aren’t just music, they’re mirrors. They echo what I couldn’t say out loud during the relapse, the rage, the quiet unraveling.

Ink, Blood, and Prayer is not a neat recovery arc. It’s sacred grief. Divine rage. A love letter to survival, not because it’s pretty, but because it happened.

Ink, Blood, and Prayer

“This is not a book about getting better. This is a book about getting through.”

Releasing July 17, 2025

If you’ve ever lived through what should’ve killed you, this book is for you.

What Comes Next?

The launch party for Ink, Blood, and Prayer will be held on July 17th at Werner Books in Erie, Pa. for anyone local to the area- come check it out and pick up a signed copy at a discounted price!

But beyond that?

When the Noise Stops, Who Am I? is a poetry collection that sits in the stunned, echoing silence after chaos: after the early days of recovery, after collapse, after everything that once drowned out the self falls away. These poems ask what remains when the distractions are gone, when survival no longer demands noise. It’s tender, haunted, and reverent in its searching, an exploration of identity, divinity, and memory from a voice that has known both ruin and resurrection.

“I am learning to survive the quiet / without burning down the house I built to hold me.”

When the Noise Stops, Who Am I? will be released through Bluebonnet Books in early December 2025.