Unseen Scars: Cold, Cruel, Deeply Rooted and Ever Present

Some scars are never seen-but they shape everything we become.

In Unseen Scars: Cold, Cruel, Deeply Rooted and Ever Present, memory, identity, and lived experience collide in a powerful collection of poetry and reflection. These pages explore the quiet wounds left by family, history, and the everyday realities we learn to live with.

Moving between tenderness and unease, warmth and loss, Unseen Scars captures moments of comfort found in remembered words, alongside moments that confront prejudice, inherited fear, and enduring injustice. Humor appears unexpectedly-not to soften the truth, but to reveal it-exposing the myths we are taught and the damage they leave behind.

Honest, unflinching, and deeply human, this collection bears witness to the emotional and social scars carried beneath the surface. Through poetry that is both intimate and incisive, Martin Terrell invites readers to confront uncomfortable truths while recognizing the resilience required to survive them.

Unseen Scars is not a book that seeks easy answers. It is a work that insists on remembrance, reflection, and the importance of telling stories that refuse to disappear.

Martin Terrell is a writer whose work explores memory, identity, race, and lived experience through poetry and reflection. He attended Ohio University as a graduate student in Journalism and later served as Assistant Dean for Advancement in the College of Arts and Sciences. His professional career includes senior leadership roles in higher education and nonprofit development. Unseen Scars reflects a life shaped by adversity, accountability, and the enduring power of truth-telling.