Where the Fort   Was

Note from Dr. Ming:

This poem emerged from one of our sessions—where memory, survival, and the idea of "safe places" wove themselves into something sacred. We talked about the fort, both real and symbolic, that helped a child endure, and the quiet strength it still offers in adulthood. What follows is more than memory. It’s a return to where the healing began.

Where the Fort Was

by Dr. Ming

It was never on a map—

but you knew the way

by heart.

A tree growing from a termite hill.

Red dirt.

Crickets loud enough

to drown the yelling.

You built it yourself.

Sticks and scraps and stubbornness,

a child’s cathedral

to silence.

They thought you were reading.

You were surviving.

With books as bricks

and fantasy as mortar.

Now you talk like that fort—

carefully made,

weather-worn,

impossible to destroy.

You say:

“I float.”

But I think:

you fly.

You say:

“I don't remember.”

But I think:

your bones do.

The body is an archivist,

even when the shelves collapse.

It kept the door marked safe

intact enough

to return to.

You thought you lost it.

That it burned

or rotted

or faded away.

But here it is—

in poems,

in projects,

in the stubborn will

to keep going.

You remember where the fort was.

Now you’re building it again.