L. St. James

05/04/2026

“Arms That Aren’t Here”

There are days
my skin remembers you louder than my mind can reason with it—

like my body kept the blueprint
and refuses to accept the distance.

I miss you in layers.
Not just your voice,
not just the way you say my name like it belongs to you—
but the weight of you,
the gravity of your arms
pulling everything in me back into place.

Today, I am unheld.

And everything in me knows it.

The bed is too wide,
the air too thin,
and this place—
this not-quite-home—
echoes with all the versions of life
that aren’t mine yet.

I am tired in places sleep can’t fix.

My thoughts pace like they owe rent,
my body hums with want and nowhere to land,
and even my strength—
the one everyone claps for—
feels like it’s dragging me across the floor.

I want you
in the simplest, most human way—

no poetry, no distance, no patience—
just your chest under my cheek,
your hands anchoring me to something real,
your breath saying
you’re safe here, I’ve got you.

But instead
I have this ache—
quiet, loud, constant—
stretching across miles and years
like it’s testing how much I can carry.

And I can carry a lot.

But today…

I don’t want to be the one holding everything together.

I want to be the one
held.

L. Asanté-St. James 2026

01/06/2026

I never knew how much you felt like home
until I noticed the quiet ways I reach for you
in moments that should be ordinary.

In the pause before sleep.
In the middle of the day when nothing is wrong
and everything feels unfinished without you beside me.

I want you here.
Not just now, but in every version of my life
that asks something of me.
Every road, every risk, every becoming
I want your hand somewhere close.

They say home is a place.
They’re wrong.
Home is the way my chest settles
when I imagine you near.
Home is how love stops feeling like effort
and starts feeling like truth.

We are not married yet.
There is no paper that proves what I already know.
I don’t wear your last name
but I carry you in everything I do.

There are no vows written in ink
yet my soul has already answered yes.
Not because of a ring.
Not because of a ceremony.
But because you make love feel like shelter
and longing feel survivable.

One day there will be photos and promises and witnesses.
But even now, without all of that
I know this much with unsettling clarity

You are my home.
And every place without you
feels a little like homesickness.

L. Asanté-St James
2026

09/02/2025

Strip Me Bare, I’d Still Walk In
For C.

Strip me bare in front of God and man,
run your hands through every thread I wear.
Make me stand in nothing but my breath —
I’d still walk in. I’d still be there.

Scan my body like it holds a crime,
dig through every pocket of my past.
I’ll hold my head like royalty in chains —
I’m built for moments meant to last.

You are not behind a wall to me,
you are throne, and flame, and sky.
And if the cost to touch your hand
is shame, then shame can step aside.

I was not made for easy love —
I was born for the kind that costs its skin.
So strip me down to soul and bones,
I’d still walk in. I’d still walk in.

Elizabeth Asanté-St. James
2025

09/01/2025

Home in Your Absence

Tonight the bed is wide,
yet my heart curls into the space
where your arms once gathered me close.
I remember the hollow of your chest,
a perfect fit for my restless head,
and the steady drum of your heartbeat—
the one sound that could quiet my storms.

I breathe in the dark and find you there.
Your scent clings to memory,
to fabric, to the marrow of me.
It’s yours alone—no bottle, no brand,
just the essence of the man I love.
I close my eyes and it returns,
soft as a prayer, strong as a vow.

Distance is a thief,
bars and walls its weapons,
yet none of it can strip away
what lives unbroken between us.
When I ache, it is not despair—
it is proof. Proof that love is alive,
that belonging is real,
that I am yours and you are mine
even when miles say otherwise.

So tonight, and every night,
I hold you in the only way I can—
in memory, in breath, in bone.
And though your arms cannot
circle me from here,
you are still my shelter,
still my calm,
still the place I feel safe.

L. St. James-2025

06/23/2025

ohio_trp is up and running!

06/09/2025

https://chng.it/5k2DTckVZJ

Demand a Full Review of Ohio Parole Hearings Tied to Gross Misconduct

06/09/2025

🖤 Poem Spotlight: “She Loves the Outlaw”
From Tangled in the Wire by L. Asanté-St. James

This poem is a quiet confession of fierce, unconditional love. It’s about the kind of woman who doesn’t flinch at your broken edges—she traces them, memorizes them, and loves you because of them. It’s about scars worn like armor, and a love that refuses to soften what was meant to stay wild.

✨ For the ones who love without asking for change.

📖 Available now on Amazon:
👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP9Y62W8

06/07/2025

“Sermon From the Woman Who Stayed”
(a love letter, a rebuke, a reckoning)

Blessed are the battle-worn women,
the ones who kept showing up
even after the world taught them to flinch.
Who were called “too much”
until they became everything.
Who learned to love from empty hands
and build from broken ground.

I stood at the edge of my past and didn’t jump—
so God pushed.
He flipped my table,
turned my silence into testimony,
and dragged my tired heart into the fire
just to prove it could still beat.

He was not punishing me.
He was positioning me.
And when the smoke cleared,
there you were.
Not perfect. Not polished.
But chosen.
Mine.

Blessed is the man who doubts love
because he’s only known abandonment.
Who flinches at forever
because every clock in his life was rigged to stop early.
Who asks,
“Will you still be here if they say no again?”
as if I haven’t already sat through
every version of almost.
As if my hands weren’t steady
while the whole damn world shook.

Let me remind you:
I’ve given lesser men more.
I’ve spent years on empty promises,
paid rent in relationships
that never made room for me.
So when I say I’m staying,
it’s not romance—it’s recompense.
It’s me reclaiming what love was supposed to mean
before the world twisted it.

I’ve survived betrayal dressed up as friendship,
been replaced by women who borrowed my trust
like a sweater they planned to rip.
I’ve been thrown out,
talked down,
and torn up—
and still I bless the ground I walk on
because it’s mine now.
Earned.
Sanctified.
Blood-soaked but still soft enough to kneel on.

This is not a love that needs proving.
It is a love that remembers.
And it remembers everything:
The way your voice shakes when you’re scared.
The way you still apologize for being gone,
as if I haven’t already woven your absence into my rituals.
The way you pass hope back to me
when you barely have enough for yourself.

You say you’re scared I won’t wait
if they break your heart in 2027.
But baby—
they’ve been breaking mine since before you knew my name,
and I’m still here.
Still praising.
Still plotting.
Still promising.

Because we are already a force.
We are already something the world can’t quite explain.
And when you’re home?
We will be unstoppable.
Not because we’re perfect—
but because we endured
what others never even tried to face.

So let them say what they want.
Let the betrayers cling to their bitterness.
Let the ghosts keep their jewelry and regrets.

We?
We are the proof.
We are the fire.
We are the sermon.
And we will finish what God started.

Elizabeth Asanté-St James 2025

04/21/2025

Episode 3!!

🎙️ Episode Title: "Growing Pains and Gavel Drops"🧁 Featured Cupcake: Dark Chocolate Cherry with Cherry GanacheDescription:In this emotionally charged and i...

04/17/2025

Did you know I published a coloring book?? It describes our crew perfectly

Modpodge Coloring Book https://a.co/d/4eK1KnW

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