Unspoken

What happens when the only way to be loved is to disappear?

This spoken word performance dives into trauma, chronic illness, and the cost of staying in relationships that require silence and self-erasure. “The Terms of My Disappearance” is a poem about betrayal, survival, and the moment you choose to remain visible, even if it means losing someone.

This piece speaks to anyone who has been called “too much,” struggled with invisible illness, or felt the pain of conditional love.

Humiliation Ritual is a spoken word poem about silence, rupture, and the moment suffering becomes impossible to ignore.

The poem unfolds in a hallway outside a closed door. Inside, conversation continues. Laughter moves easily between people. Outside, someone is calling for help.

But the door does not open.

Through the imagery of fire slowly filling a hallway, this piece explores a familiar pattern in trauma and power dynamics: people often do not respond to suffering itself. They respond when that suffering begins to disturb their comfort.

When the smoke reaches the keyhole.

When silence is no longer easy to maintain.

Humiliation Ritual examines how blame is often redistributed after the fact, and how shame is placed exactly where anger should have stood.

This spoken word piece is part of the Unspoken podcast, a series exploring trauma, rupture, accountability, and the language we use to describe harm.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: The Wisp Sings by Winter Aid

Written: March 7, 2026

Two Floors is a spoken word poem about the distance between survival and indifference.

While voices and laughter carry easily through the floorboards above, someone lies below—waiting, fading, listening to a world that continues without them.

With quiet intensity and vivid imagery, Kate explores the terrifying closeness of help that never comes, and the moment when the space between two floors becomes the space between life and being forgotten.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: Gymnopédie No. 1

Written: March 10, 2026

In this spoken word poem, Kate reimagines the familiar fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf through the lens of trauma and therapy.

The Girl Who Cried Wolf asks what happens when the threat others dismiss is not imaginary—but internal. In trauma work, the past does not always stay in the past. It lingers as an intruder that circles the nervous system long after the danger is gone.

The poem explores the experience of living with internal alarms that others cannot see: the voices, memories, and embodied fears that can feel as real as teeth at the door. When someone has lived too long beside a wolf, their warnings can begin to sound like exaggeration to those who have never heard it breathing.

This piece reflects on disbelief, on the cost of being dismissed, and on the lonely work of surviving something that continues to live inside the body.

If you have ever tried to explain a fear that others could not see—or felt the quiet shame of being told you are “too much”—this poem is for you.

Copyright ©2026 Kate Earley

Music: Sonder by Niall Byrne

When I was sixteen, I wrote in my journal:

“I once heard about a saint. I’ve forgotten her name now. I remember her story. She was about to be raped. The saint poked out her eyes so that she would become so unattractive that the perpetrator would no longer want to rape her. I never did anything like that. Jesus, I barely yelled. I barely fought. I guess that’s why she’s a saint….and I’m not.”

Years later, that entry became the seed of my spoken word poem “Self‑Mutilation as Miracle.”

This piece explores how women’s suffering has been sanctified—how holiness and harm blur in stories of female saints who mutilated themselves to survive.

In this episode, I perform the poem and reflect on the relationship between faith, body, and silence, asking what it really means to call something holy.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: Cornfield Chase by Anna Steven’s & Michael Forester

Written: November 4, 2025

Cover art: Joyce Lee

If “I’m sorry” slips out of your mouth before you even know you’ve said it — this episode is for you.

Apology Loop is a spoken word piece about the survival habit of over-apologizing: the way we shrink ourselves to stay safe, make others comfortable, and disappear before we cause disappointment.

This poem explores people-pleasing, shame, trauma responses, and the lifelong work of learning to take up space. It’s for anyone who grew up believing that being quiet, small, or “easy” was the only way to be loved.

Listen if you’ve ever apologized for existing, for speaking, for needing, or for simply being human — and if you’re ready to practice saying something different.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: Chord Left by Agnes Obel

Written: October 21, 2025

In Don’t Feed the Animals, poet and nurse practitioner Kate Earley delivers a haunting spoken-word piece about empathy, control, and what it means to be “safe enough to love.”

Through the metaphor of the zoo, this performance explores how care can turn to captivity — how survival, hunger, and gentleness are reshaped for the comfort of those watching.

Part elegy, part indictment, Don’t Feed the Animals asks what happens to the wild parts of us when they’re cleaned up for display.

It’s a quiet roar — measured, aching, and unflinchingly human.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: September Song by Agnes Obel

Written: October 15, 2025

What does it mean to give something you never wanted to give? To say yes because no felt heavier? Put A Finger Down is a raw and haunting spoken word poem exploring themes of coercion, trauma, dissociation, and survival. Through visceral imagery and quiet devastation, this piece captures the weight of being made to endure—of being present in a body that is no longer yours.

If you’ve ever felt like an empty space, a door left open just to prove you could, this poem is for you.

Reverse Triage is a taut, atmospheric spoken-word poem by Kate Earley about a quiet office hallway that turns into an unexpected scene of collapse and hesitation.

With stark, cinematic language, Kate captures the suspended moment when everyday routine fractures—the hum of fluorescent lights, the echo of unanswered calls, and the fragile choice to act.

Perfect for fans of contemporary poetry, narrative suspense, and reflections on human instinct, this episode explores the bystander effect and the thin line between ordinary life and crisis.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: Mariage d’Amour by Raban

September 24, 2025

In this raw and electrifying spoken word poem, pediatric nurse practitioner and patient advocate Kate Earley delivers a searing indictment of medical gaslighting, institutional betrayal, and the fight to be believed. Body of Proof speaks to every patient who’s ever been dismissed, doubted, or diagnosed with “difficulty” instead of dignity.

Written after years of navigating life-threatening hypoglycemia, systemic negligence, and trauma within Canadian healthcare, this poem isn’t a plea—it’s a reckoning.

With themes of medical PTSD, systemic power, women’s pain, chronic illness advocacy, and trauma-informed care, this episode is for anyone who’s ever had to bring data just to be heard.

Copyright ©2025 Kate Earley

Music: Naval by Yann Tiersen

Written: July 5, 2025