H.L. Fitzgerald

Author. Poet. Moon-lover. Book collector. Bee defender. INTJ by nature. Type 4 by nurture. Little witchy. Hates people, loves humans.

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Father's Day June 21, 2026

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June 20, 2026

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June 19, 2026

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June 18, 2026

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I'm trying to find the love that is buried in me. Out of reach, slipping through my fingers every day, just past where I can reach.

I can do a haiku every day. That's attainable. Maybe I can grasp the spark. Maybe the spark can grow. Maybe, alight in me again, the words will come.

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

"How old were you, when you first fell in love?"

And, god,

When was I not in love?

With the sun,

With the trees,

With the flowers.

When was I not enamored?

With the moon,

The stars,

The seasons,

The boy up the street.

When was I not dreaming?

About her lips,

the shape of them when she says my name,

About the feel of the ocean salt,

licking its way down my spine,

About the caress of overgrown grass,

tickling my cheek,

About the rain on my face,

peppering my skin with gentle kisses.

Oh, god,

I want to rake my nails down the back of this life,

To grind my hips into the sunrise and scream into the night,

Relishing in the sheer pleasure of being alive.

When did I first fall in love?

When did I take my first breath?

I fell in love

With being in love.

~H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

When I was a child, all I wanted to be was a mother.

And a zookeeper.

And a marine biologist.

I wanted to care for something.

When I was in high school, all I wanted to be was a mother.

And a marine biologist.

And a forensic pathologist.

And a nurse.

Let me care. Please.

When I was in college, all I wanted to be was a nurse.

And alive.

Sometimes.

Please somebody care.

I became a nurse.

I didn't want to be a mother. How selfish of me to want to be a mother.

How selfish to project onto something that can't even feed itself the responsibility of fixing twenty some years of loneliness.

If that was motherhood, I'd never want it.

Now I am a nurse. And a part of me will always want to be a marine biologist. And a writer. And a painter. And a pianist.

And maybe I am. Maybe I am all that I wanted to be, unwrapped from the blankets of childhood and rose glasses and sweat stained daydreaming.

And I want to be a mother.

I'm still lonely, sometimes. But not in the same way.

I want to take a life and hold their tiny hand and say, "This way. Come with me. Let me show you this world."

All of its beauty admist all of the hate and the pain.

The watercolor sunsets and a belly laugh and a good book and iced tea on a hot day and falling into salty waves to wash away the sad when it's caked on like mud.

Let me show you how to love through the pain, how to fight against the hate, how to be good.

Let me show you how to care.

Let me care for you.

My hands, dirty and brown, stained by soil and sweat, just like a child, pat a plant into place amongst all the other plants.

Water, cooling and soft.

A promise. A vow.

"There. I will care for you."

~H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

When we met, I told you I didn't believe in God.

That I hated God.

That i wanted nothing to do with God.

You smiled gently and asked me

to let you show me your God.

And it took some time, but I did.

I let you show me that God is in the world

in nature

in the flowers blooming in my garden

in the whisper of the wind through my trees

and the rain, gentle or torrential.

God is in the faces of those I love

in the laughter over one too many margaritas

in the gentility of my friends, their hands on my face

holding me tightly in the pain we share.

Like an oath. Like I love you.

God is in my dogs

in the way they love me

in the undeniable soul in their eyes

in the way they teach me how to take every day as a gift,

gratitude for too little time.

God is in me,

in the strength and determination, unfailing,

in the feel of my skin

fingers dancing over the evidence of survival

white, pink, purple, yellow

in the breath from my lips

the mussed hair

the crying and the laughter and the human.

God is in you

in your crooked smile

in my fingers in your hair

in the curves and slopes and ridges

in the muscles and bones beneath the skin

that cartographers have drawn.

You asked to show me God and I let you.

You showed me God.

You showed me your demons.

I found my religion.

I lost you.

~H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I wake up in the morning,

so utterly destroyed

devoid

desperate,

that given the chance,

I would drive a dagger into my sternum

Just to pull the pain out.

I would tear my heart from my chest,

broken and beating,

and present it to you

like a kid holding a broken bird;

sad and scared,

pleading with you to fix it.

And I would ask

With trembling hands and salt stained cheeks

"Is it enough?"

"Will it ever be enough?"

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

It is December 13th, and there is a fire.

It's hot. The air is brisk. The night is dark. My hands are cold. My soul is aflame.

Yes, it's December 13th, I'm two months and one day early in writing this.

But this is the last one I will ever write.

This year would have been my seventh, but no longer.

This will be the last one I ever write because three years and one day ago, I chose this path.

I took a saw to my wrist and the bone snapped and I screamed in agony and relief.

I've spent three years trying to stop the bleed.

So tonight, I lit a fire. And I plunged my hand into the red hot embers and fed the heat with words.

Yours.

Mine.

Ours.

And it was funny, in the end. The things you wrote to me, the things you said you loved about me, they were repeated to me by another. And then a third.

I was convinced that I became that person because I loved you.

But maybe it had nothing to do with you. Or the other men.

Maybe it was always me.

The box is gone. What is not now ash will go to another's hands. What is still here is mine. Your hands touched it, but it was never yours.

The embers and smoke returned to the night sky.

The art of letting go.

The beauty in goodbye.

The silence of solidity.

With each bite I fed the flames, I thanked the sparks.

For a lesson.

For an experience.

For my wisdom.

And, for what it's worth, for love.

December 12th has come and gone, but love remains. Just not from you.

From the people who hold me as I walk through this little life.

The ones who celebrated my victory with me. And mourned the lost hand.

Tonight, I found the source of the bleed. And I cauterized it in the coal.

I pulled the tabs from my pages. I tore the shirts to strips. I emptied the box and cleansed us both.

I thanked you for the lesson. I thanked me for leaving. I thanked the peace for finally peaking its face around the corner.

I'll never grow my hand back, but it will heal.

I'll never regain the youth, but I learned the lesson.

I'll never forget you but I can let you go now.

I'll never look back.

I'll never write another February 14th poem. All my future Februaries are mine.

How free is that?

It's December 13th. Independence Day came.

Let freedom ring.

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

It wasn't really a confusing form I suppose.

Name? Easy.

Date of birth? Got it.

Email address? My phone can fill that in automatically.

What are you looking for help with?

A pause.

A tear.

A tightening of the chest.

How does one put that into words?

What do I need help with?

What do I call what happened?

Clinical terms. Slurs. Whispers.

They're just words.

What happened wasn't words.

It was pain.

Unforgiving. Unrelenting.

It was haunting.

A ghost of fingers that showers cannot wash down the drain.

It was gutting.

A slice of a knife from nose to navel. Innards spilling out for hands to languidly luxuriate in.

Hands. Fucking hands.

Hands that I knew every inch of.

Every callous.

Every whirl.

Hands that hurt.

Hands that cut.

Hands that took.

Hands that invaded.

Hands that used to hold me, to run circles over my skin, to keep me safe.

Hands that tore.

A body. Broken. Used. Scarred. Bruised.

Do I even have one anymore?

Or is this just skin that's holding in me the girl that wants to hide?

Maybe that's what I am.

My own damn hiding place.

Because if this is a body, it is just that. A body. Not my body. Not mine. It was his. Then his. Then theirs. Then his again.

I don't want it anymore. I don't recognize it anymore.

It was mine. A long time ago. Now?

Now I want to escape it.

I want to claw my way out of it.

I want to scrub the skin off in the shower until not a single cell knows what touch feels like.

I want to rake my nails down my legs and shred from them the pain.

I want to burn it away.

I want to pull my heart from my chest just to stop the ache.

What are you looking for help with?

Me.

Help me.

-H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

Malleable and fresh, I handed you the clay to mold me into what you wanted the remnants of which show through today. All of the paint that I've chipped away, reglazing myself time and again but I can never change the jar beneath. The jar that your hands sculpted, touched and twisted, prepared to please, conditioned to care, a perfected picture of dysfunction. -H.L. Fitzgerald "Groomed"

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I never asked you how you felt about being a poem but that was you from the start—poetry. Sparkling eyes, deep and crystal blue a smile like a child awakening to snow a voice I’ve known in every lifetime and will undoubtably know again. We were a slow burn—Austenian in nature, months of messages and books stolen smiles exchanged with only eyes until one day, there you were, embracing me over a cup of coffee. How quickly a fickle heart finds relief hope that love is more than hurt that I could begin again, healthy and new that maybe I could be that for you too. I wore a smile home like a stolen hoodie, not wanting to shed the warmth of you, fingertips playing notes across your seashell skin that I scoured the beaches for surprised how quickly you became something to miss something to want to return home to and unfurl all the hurt I had grown so skilled at hiding. You took the jagged edges of me and ran your fingers along them while I mapped out the constellations on your body, adding cartographer and astronomer to my skillset. So now I ask you, was it love that blinded me or lust that did you? Your casual cruelty took what I thought to be unapologetic and warped us into a clandestine love painfully familiar and known. I suppose we both lucked out in that I know how to be a secret. I know what the inside of closet doors feel like and am skilled at making sweet with skeletons. The difference is that I have grown from my mistakes and I refuse to repeat that pain. I am tired of clinging. I shall let go and let the current take me. I shall call this a lesson learned.

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

"On Grief " by H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

After America cleaved herself from the motherland,

Did she crave the warmth of control she tried so desperately to leave?

What is freedom when you cannot forget?

What is it like to ride the streets, a Paul Revere, crying for freedom,

screaming to not forget the good fight, to not go quietly into the night?

Do you think she ever got to her knees and begged forgiveness for her blasphemy?

How many nights did young America spend clutching her chest,

trying to fill the void she created, the death of a dynasty that left a gaping hole of grief,

the wound that would not heal?

The pain of self inflicted heartbreak is one not so easily palliated.

The clarity of death will not come, though I'll always know the bravery it took to run.

It's Independence Day and I am homesick.

It's Independence Day and god--I want to go home.

-H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I'm in my twenties and I sit and read self-help books until they're tattooed onto my eyes but not my brain somehow. I'm in my twenties and watch videos on the internet to feel validated in my trauma. I'm in my twenties and time is measured by the distance between psychiatry appointments, by the changed medication and appetite, by the patterns of sleep and whether or not the night terrors have ceased because even in my twenties, I apparently still have chronic bad dreams.. I'm in my twenties and my friends are few but everything. Each one a funnel of love. I'm in my twenties and I have been to a club only three times. Most Friday nights are my dogs in my bed with Friends on in the background. I'm in my twenties and I know my body will likely never look better than it does now and yet I criticize it; the folds of fat that sit beneath my breasts when I put a bra on, the cellulite I've watched grow on my outer thighs, how I now have two chins when I smile. On the other hand, my cheeks are rounder and my smile actually reaches my eyes now. I'm in my twenties with forty years' worth of baggage to unpack and muscles that ache from carrying it far longer than I have needed to. I'm in my twenties and want to be wild and free and make love to strangers in foreign lands but go numb when I feel a man's hands on me. I'm in my twenties and I wonder if I am meant to love a woman. I'm in my twenties and play mancala with my pill box on Sundays, dropping each one into the slots, like day of the week panties, and I'm taken back to the clear glass marbles and wooden board and my grandmother's contagious laugh all of whom have turned into antidepressants, an ugly green plastic pill box, and sitting alone on my bed, playing a game I did not sign up for, one that I do not want to play. I'm in my twenties and for the first time in my life, there is a future beyond twenty-seven. I don't want to belong to that club anymore. I'm not excited for the future, necessarily, but more--curious. That's a good first step, isn't it? Curiosity. Maybe, when I'm in my thirties, I'll be excited and not just curious. I'm in my twenties and I'm learning a lot about first steps. I'm learning how to admit I've got a problem, that my life is unmanageable, that I am powerless, which, to a control freak, is no good, awful, and very bad. But here I am, being okay with just the first step. Like I said, I'm in my twenties, and I am learning. And for that, I am grateful.

H.L. Fitzgerald