Raised in Ruins is a searing poetic memoir told in verse—an unflinching excavation of trauma, silence, and survival. Spanning childhood through fatherhood, Fischer A. Millsap maps the emotional landscape of growing up invisible in a household cracked by violence, addiction, and abandonment. Each poem is a confession, a scar, a breath held too long.
Divided into three parts and closed by a series of ten bonus poems, this collection charts an evolving narrative: from a boy who learns to disappear in his own home, to a man wrestling with inherited pain, addiction, and what it means to stay alive for someone else. Along the way, Millsap confronts masculinity, generational wounds, and the ache of being unloved out loud.
With brutal lyricism and aching clarity, Raised in Ruins speaks for the ones who were never asked how they were doing. It is not a redemption story—but it is a survival story, raw and real. For anyone who’s ever been told to “man up” instead of speak up, these pages are proof that breathing—still—is a kind of resistance.
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