Not Everyone Deserves the Waters That Healed Me

They ask what I’ve written,
what I’ve birthed from my ribs,
what rose from the salt of my open wounds
when I finally stopped apologizing for bleeding.

They ask for pages—
but they weren’t there
when the chapters were written in tears
and bathwater,
in silence,
and Florida water,
in sea salt and scripture and
all the no’s I swallowed to keep my voice from cracking.

They want the cover.
They want the title.
But I ask,
Did they kneel at the altar before requesting entrance?
Did they come with clean hands, or just curiosity?

This book is not content.
It is covenant.
It is not a project.
It is a resurrection.

I wrote it in a language the ocean gave me—
between heartbreaks,
between hospital visits,
between altar candles that flickered for women
who never lived long enough to write their own.

I wrote it with God on my tongue
and my grandmother in my spine.

So no—
not everyone gets to sip from this cup.
Not every gaze deserves this baptism.
Not every reader knows how to hold a woman
who wrote her way out of drowning.

If you’re going to open this book,
you better come with reverence.
Come barefoot.
Come prayerful.
Come ready to remember
that healing is not always soft.
It is sacred.
It is sovereign.
And it cost me everything I thought I had to lose
to write it.

This is water.
Holy water.
And I don’t pour it
for those who treat sacred things
like something to sip and forget–

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