Rooms in a Burning House

Rooms in a Burning House is a poetic exploration of mental illness through the metaphor of a living, breathing mansion-one whose rooms shift, fracture, multiply, and burn alongside the mind that inhabits it.Structured in three acts, this collection invites readers to walk through symbolic rooms that embody anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, psychosis, dissociation, neurodivergence, grief, identity, and survival. Each poem is not a diagnosis, but an emotional architecture: the felt experience of living inside a mind shaped by disorder, memory, and resilience.In Act I, the house is alive-its corridors flickering with panic, its bedrooms heavy with despair, its observatory blazing with manic brilliance. Act II leads deeper into hidden wings and impossible rooms, where paranoia watches from keyholes and compulsions weave themselves into ritual. In Act III, the fire has passed, leaving ash, silence, and the difficult work of standing among ruins and understanding what remains.Written with lyric intensity and compassionate clarity, Rooms in a Burning House is not a book about being broken. It is a book about survival-about the rooms we carry within us, the fires we endure, and the quiet truth that even in devastation, the house still stands.For readers of mental health poetry, metaphor-driven literature, and anyone who has ever lived inside their own mind and wondered if they were alone, this book offers recognition, witness, and a steady hand through the smoke.