GenZAlmanac

anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma

A.P. Haughton

The Pebble

The night split open
with the sound of their voices.
Screams tore through the walls,
sharp, relentless,
like broken glass
dragged across my ears.

I was too small to stop it,
too fragile to bear it.
So I went outside,
searching for silence,
searching for something
my hands could hold.

There it was—
a pebble,
small, cold,
ordinary.

I picked it up as though it were a secret.

I painted it red,
thinking it might become a heart.
But the screams still bled through.

I painted it yellow,
thinking it might become the sun.
But the night inside me did not break.

I painted it blue,
thinking it might become the sky.
But the walls still shook with storms.

And when I was done,
the pebble shone with colors
that did not belong to it.
Artificial brightness,
layers on layers,
all hiding the truth.

Yet beneath the paint—
I could feel it still.
The roughness.
The weight.
The gray.

Always the gray.

Years later,
I learned what that pebble meant.

…

Read the rest of this poem and others at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2V7834. This is a sneak peek at “poems from the gray” coming out October 18th.

These are not just poems about gray—they are poems written inside it.
In this collection, the gray becomes more than a color: it is shadow, silence, storm, and inheritance. From childhood closets and forgotten celebrations to the weight of ancestry and the burn of survival, Poems from the Gray explores the places where light and dark blur together, leaving us suspended in between.

Through images of pebbles, wolves, meteors, and ashes, these poems unravel the many shades of gray—what it destroys, what it hides, and what it teaches. At once haunting and resilient, this book is both a testimony to pain and a map toward transformation.

Poems from the Gray invites you to sit in the silence, confront the shadows, and discover what it means to rise, carrying both the darkness and the light.