a collection of unspoken prayers, loving women, and unbecoming shame

In this intimate and lyrical debut, Cemmi Rane invites us into the soft and storm-laced terrain of queer girlhood, religious trauma, lost motherhood, and the sacred act of survival. Through poems that read like letters never sent and breaths finally exhaled, Becoming; Breathing at Last offers a portrait of what it means to return to your own skin—not triumphant, but trembling and still choosing to stay.

Each section traces the quiet revolutions of a body learning it no longer needs to vanish to be loved. From the early hush of queer desire, to the tenderness that endured abandonment, to the reclamation of softness as strength—these pages hold the ache of what was taken and the reverence of what remains.

This is not a story of neat healing.
It’s a story of slow blooming.
Of breath. Of return.
Of becoming—and breathing, at last.