The Bitter Years

Some memories never fade & time doesn't heal.The Bitter Years is a deeply personal collection of 100 poems written across years of grief, anger, abandonment, loss & self-discovery.Beginning as the thoughts of a sixteen-year-old trying to make sense of the world around him, these poems became a record of a life-the death of loved ones, the absence of parents, the weight of family, the search for belonging & the lasting effects of childhood carried into adulthood.Through memories of a broken boy searching for a home, a young man struggling with the person he had become & a father determined to shelter his own children from the pain he once knew, J.A. Amendola confronts the past without pretending that every wound has healed.These poems were never written to provide easy answers. They are portraits of people, places & moments that refuse to disappear. They capture the bitterness of holding on, the fear of letting go & the realization that sometimes understanding your past does not mean erasing it.Raw, vulnerable & deeply personal, The Bitter Years puts a life on display one memory at a time.The bitter years are my truth. They are me.