Kiera Gerety

Some books are written with ink. Others are written with the trembling hands of survival, dipped in blood, stitched with scars. Ink, Blood, & Prayer is one of those rare books that doesn’t just tell you a story, it opens a wound and invites you to witness the healing. If you’re looking for a tidy recovery narrative, close this tab. This isn’t that kind of poetry.

It begins with a warning: This book is raw. Not as a disclaimer, but as a promise. Because from the first page to the last, these poems do not flinch. They do not look away from the truth of addiction, of relapse, of that feral ache to disappear. Instead, they stare it down.

One early reader wrote, “Wow! That is really an intense collection! It’s an unflinching portrait of the harrowing cycle of addiction… marked, in the best circumstances, by halting ‘progress’ but unsurprisingly paired with the volatility of relapse and ongoing struggle.” That word, unflinching, is exactly right. There is nothing sentimental or sanitized here. There is only the truth.

The Lie of Tidy Redemption Arcs

In every bookstore’s recovery section, there’s a shelf dedicated to “how I got better.” Memoirs that end on a note of triumph. Novels that wrap addiction in metaphor, or poetry that speaks of pain with a kind of removed, clinical grace. Ink, Blood, & Prayer spits on that model.

This book doesn’t begin at rock bottom and end in inspiration. It doesn’t ask you to feel good. Instead, it opens with relapse, with longing, with the brutal truth of being four days clean and still craving the thing that almost killed you. It offers no grand epiphany, only breath after breath of choosing to stay.

The section titles themselves say it best:

• Fire and Ash
• Scarred but Standing
• The Road Back
• Where the Ash Settles
• Between Ruin and Revelation
• Waking the Bones

There is no pretending. Just survival, just the slow, staggering process of stitching yourself back together. Or as one reader put it, “Her poetry vividly conveys the suffering and emotional devastation of addiction… I get a real sense of raw vulnerability but also of deep courage and resilience, which I find inspiring.”

What It Means to Write Honestly About Addiction

Each poem is a piece of truth ripped from the chest. There are no metaphors for heroin here, it’s named, described, confronted. The body isn’t abstracted: it aches, bleeds, trembles. These poems are alive with the physicality of addiction: the cravings, the cuts, the rituals of use, and the long, dragging days of trying not to go back.

Take a poem like “Red, White, and Brown,” where clean time is measured not in weeks but in blood, in withheld desire, in blades and phone calls and almosts. Or “War Inside,” which opens with the line: “Four days clean, / but my body remembers.” Every word is soaked in the tension between longing and survival.

The reader who said, “Her poetry reveals a lot about her,” was right. You get to know the voice behind these poems intimately, and not because I give you tidy anecdotes or palatable metaphors. You know me because I bleed on the page. Because I tell you the truth, even when it hurts.

The Sacred Rage of the Gods Who Held Me Anyway

In Ink, Blood, & Prayer, survival is not just physical. It is deeply spiritual. This isn’t poetry that separates the sacred from the scarred. These poems braid together blood and ritual, relapse and prayer. The gods in these pages do not demand obedience, they offer companionship. Not salvation, but presence.

Wodan. Frau Holle. Hekate. These aren’t abstract symbols. They are the ones who walked beside me when my sponsor ghosted me. When recovery rooms alienated me. When I prayed not for strength but for the pain to stop. They held me through every fifth step, every breakdown, every relapse.

One reader said, “I liked how she conveys, in so many words, that it’s enough just to ‘be here’, to keep standing, to keep bearing it all… I think that’s a lesson for anyone.” That’s exactly what the gods in this book offer, not deliverance, but companionship in the darkness.

Why Poetry Should Not Flinch

There’s a current in modern poetry to tidy things up. To make the pain sound beautiful, the trauma digestible, the ending redemptive. Ink, Blood, & Prayer rejects all of that. These poems are not neat. They are not soft. They are not Instagrammable.

But they are honest. They are real. They carry the weight of survival in every line.

That same early reviewer said, “As she says, in the best case, we can arrive at gratitude (‘I give thanks for this beautiful life.’)” And yet that gratitude never feels forced or falsely optimistic. It’s earned. It comes at the end of “Fire, Earth, and Breath,” after a poem that lights a candle, chants to the gods, and stands barefoot on the earth after years of falling.

It is not a triumph. It is a breath.

And in a world that demands survivors perform inspiration, that asks us to tidy up our pain into narratives of success, breath is radical.

This Book Is For…

• The ones still counting days.
• The ones who relapsed last week and made it back.
• The ones who are still too scared to come back.
• The ones who think healing means you stop hurting.
• The ones who need to hear that standing is enough.
• The ones who pray with rage instead of folded hands.
• The ones who light candles because they have no more words.

This book is not for spectators. It’s not for the curious or the comfortable. It’s for the scarred. For the ones still walking. For the ones who’ve tried to forget what pain feels like and failed.

And for every reader, like the one who offered this review, who sees themselves in these lines: “We all have our anguishes and troubles and sometimes, they can feel burdensome and overwhelming. But we can just ‘be here’. No straining, no self-judgement.”

We Are Not Alone in Our Journeys

Perhaps the most quietly powerful thing Ink, Blood, & Prayer does is create space. Not a platform. Not a lecture hall. A space.

A circle of chairs. A room in a sober living house filled with laughter and takeout. A forest path, bare feet on earth. A kitchen where someone lights a candle and whispers the name of a god that doesn’t demand perfection.

That same early reader ended their review with this: “I also liked her emphasis on community—we are not alone in our journeys; there is the help and comfort of others.” And that’s the deepest truth this book offers.

We’re not alone.

There is always another chair in the room. Another phone call. Another poem. Another breath.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

A Final Word

I wrote this book because I had to.
Those are the opening words of the foreword, and they ring through every page.

If you are in pain, this book will not offer false comfort.
If you are healing, this book will not pretend it’s easy.
If you are fighting, this book will sit beside you in the dark.

And if you are here, reading this—then, like the poems say:

That is enough.
That has always been enough.

Want to walk with me?

You can pre-order your copy of Ink, Blood, & Prayer here.

You can join me on this journey: on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram or at the book launch at Werner Books on July 17th.

Light a candle.
Press your palms to the dirt.
And know:
You are not alone.