This collection of poetry interrogates the impact of grief and partner violence on a family lineage, as well as the connections between sorrow and joy as they relate to poetry, women's writing, and the process of the "confessional." Inextricably woven into these investigations of various types of grief is the question of what gendered and socioeconomic statuses we bring with us when we choose poetry as a method of recording the intimacies of a life.