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My unease grows; have I miscalculated the risks of this Italy assignment? I’d worried about being far from my daughter, but I’d not feared the impacts on my pregnancy.

She knows his face his arms his eyes / So well she almost forgives herself

and she stands in front of the mirror again, repeating

I devour memoirs about maternal mental health, joining mother after mother on her rapid descent into madness and her long climb back out.

Will my son remember, ten years from now, that I set everything aside to work on that little room with him? Will this be one of the memories he holds dear?

The book expertly carries the weight of its dual subtitle, meeting at the intersection of race and sexuality.

After fear there are soft resting places

you must be a parent, barely / escaping ruin. Are you hurt, / little wife?

Be breath and water, be sleek, / be song.

in all her sepia glory she’d know her lost tongue, / where her people came from, her way back home

“Be kind to yourself and trust that you are always writing. Even all the hours your pencil never touches the page while you care for your children.”