Open Letter #4 - Hear My Voice

“The more I look at your picture, the more I want to say, I beg to hear your voice… --Albert” . (Monday, April 12, 2010 11:59 PM)

February 25, 2025

Dearest Albert,

I can say this with unwavering certainty, my husband was a master manipulator. Control was his currency, obsession his shadow, and both had followed him since the day he met me at sixteen. His jealousy was a force unto itself, cloaked in the guise of devotion. When I had events—speaking engagements, book signings—he was always there, trailing at my side, wearing the mask of a supportive husband. To those who didn’t know better, he was very convincing.   

But beneath that performance was something far more insidious. He would scan every room, his gaze landing on every Black man present, keeping tally—measuring glances, stolen moments, unspoken exchanges, real or imagined. And afterward, the event itself became an afterthought, swallowed by the argument waiting for me on the other side of the night. It never failed.

The applause, the handshakes, the success of the evening did not matter. What mattered was his suspicion, his need to interrogate, to twist even the smallest interaction into proof of betrayal.

This was the exhausting rhythm of my life.

As I told you back then, he kept me caged, bound within the walls of his unrelenting suspicion. Every movement was monitored, every word weighed and dissected before it could take shape. He tapped my phones, planted bugs behind the headboard of our bed, watched me through unseen eyes, his presence lingering even in the empty spaces.

I developed the habit of speaking in fragments and whispers, my thoughts splintered before they ever reached my lips. Fear made me hesitant. Paranoia made me silent. Even writing became a danger. The very thing that had always set me free often felt like a door I dared not open.

That’s why poetry became my first love in literature. It became my refuge, my quiet rebellion, a language of survival.

In a letter to you, dated Sunday, April 11, 2010, I wrote:

"… it lets me express myself creatively and indirectly. Poetry allows me to speak in veiled truths, to weave my words into symbols, fragmented thoughts, and layered metaphors that conceal as much as they reveal. It is the art of saying without saying, of carving meaning into the spaces between the lines.

There is so much of me I cannot show, so much I cannot tell. But poetry lets me. The written word is dear to me—it has saved me in ways you could never imagine. I’ve been censored for most of my life—silenced, restrained, unable to speak my truth or express myself freely. As a child, I learned to swallow my words, to keep secrets buried, to make others comfortable. I became an illusion of strength, convincing the world that I was unbreakable, even when I was unraveling inside.”

My husband resented that about me—my passion. He loathed the way I moved through the world untethered, the way people were drawn to me—the way you were drawn to me—the light I carried, the fire in my spirit that burned beyond him, beyond his reach. He could not understand passion that was not transactional, a love for something that could not be owned or controlled.

He was not an artist, not a man of words. He had scraped by, barely graduating high school, but what he lacked in book smarts, he made up for in cunning. His sharp instincts, his get-over ways, made him a shrewd businessman—clever in survival, ruthless in pursuit. But art? Words? The power of creation for its own sake? That was something he could never grasp, and for that, he despised me.

In many ways, he wanted me to suffer. To break the free spirit in me, to see me shrink beneath the weight of his control. The friends I met along the way—the confidants, the colleagues, the bonds I carefully built—were erased, one by one. Disappearing like echoes, casualties of his insecurity.

He had managed to convince himself that every Black man wanted me, and I wanted them back. And so, he erased them from my life by any means, not out of love, but out of fear. A fear so consuming, so corrosive, that it left no room for trust—only possession.

My husband was skilled at diminishing men, cutting them down with accusations—false or otherwise—about their intentions toward his wife. He knew how to make them feel small, how to plant the seeds of suspicion before they had the chance to protest. But his cruelty was never just reserved for them. He spun lies about me, too, whispering fabrications into the ears of those I respected.

As for you, dearest Albert, I don’t know what he told you—what words he wielded to send you running, but whatever they were, they were enough. And of all the lessons that time has taught me, one truth remains: whatever we had—whatever we were—was not worth saving.

I was not worth saving. 

Sincere Regards,

Terry A. O’Neal

HAMPTON, VIRGINIA