The More You Carry

"The hardest thing a man ever sets down is the thing that used to save him. But what carried you across will not carry you up."

Most men are never taught how to put anything down.

We're taught to take the weight - to endure in silence, fix what's broken, stay strong when the room goes cold, and keep walking even when the wrong road has worn through our boots. We carry the pressure, the grudges, the armor we built to survive one hard season, until years later we realize the armor has become a cage.

The More You Carry is a quiet, unsparing compass for the inner life of a man.

In clean, accessible poems - no academic fog, no pastel clichés - Therrell Cotton Black moves through the moments that actually make or break a man: the morning reckoning in the dark, the fire of anger and how to govern it, the love a father never says out loud, the work that carries your name, and the courage it takes to unclamp your jaw and tell the truth.

It holds together the things men are told can't coexist: strength and tenderness, certainty and humility. How to carry the few who are truly yours with your whole back - and what to finally set down.

You'll find poems about how to:

• Quiet the harsh inner voice and speak to yourself like a man you're responsible for
• Govern your temper instead of being governed by it
• Say the love out loud before you're saying it at a funeral
• Tell the hard road from the wrong road, and know when to turn
• Build a life that still stands after the applause stops