This collection of poems hangs together brilliantly, each poem standing alone but building on the one that went before and the one that follows. Anyone who loves poetry will love this book. Anyone who has lost a child will seek it out. Any human who has felt grief or fears the grief to come will find this book a balm and a revelation.-- Lorna Crozier , author of Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats) This is a poet whose craft is subtle, who writes poems of exceptional gravity and beauty. This is a courageous book, and what the poet has had to walk through, to live through, in order to write this book took a kind of bravery, a kind of nerve, few could imagine.-- Todd Davis , author of Native Species These poems are both urgent and necessary, speaking to all of us, not just to mourners. They are hard poems, without easy consolation, urging us to love the world in spite of its unspeakable sorrow.

The best poetry can tear your heart into shreds, but it can also mend it again, and that's what Laura Apol is doing here. These are poems I will return to, again and again.-- Barbara Crooker , author of Some Glad Morning.