Notes From the Margins

This is work done by the Tacos and Trauma Writing Group, Fall 2025 - A writing group within the Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center of Middle Tennessee St

ate University (MTSU)

We met every Friday during the Fall semester 2025 to eat Tacos together and write, both separately and together, culminating in an extemporaneous group poem. Although the membership varied every week, the group began to write as a group whose voice became one as the semester progressed.

The following eight poems are the poems of this group. Thank you, Tacos and Trauma Writing Group for showing up for the group and for yourself.

Poem 8

11/14/25

We all have experienced those things that we’d rather forget, yet they persist in our minds, our memories in our bodies, in our cells. How do we get to them? How do we understand them? We go deeper. We seek healing. We uncover, we reexperience the feelings, sometimes we don’t want to, but we do. These experiences are what makes us uniquely us, unique yet entwined with others’ lives. We tend to forget that we are all unique yet the same. And we are all so very human.

From experience sometimes pain is bled.

Sometimes pain is bled but often times it heals.

Healing is not linear—maybe its circular.

You come back to your true self eventually.

So given that truth is in you, celebrate you. Everyday.