This was the book on grief I wasn't expecting. Every now and then I take a book at random from the library without researching it.

Doing a little reading around, I found the author was researching emeralds and then her mother fell ill and eventually died.

Throughout, we have a tender exploration of grief through this lens and how those ideas develop. The strangeness of someone suddenly missing when they were there, of what's left behind, physically and emotionally.

There were too many lines to draw out but it was quietly moving throughout. The last breath of the long final poem "Salon Noir":

"I remembered that emerald was my birthstone
that an emerald
mind in the dark
but lucent green
as leaves returning
after a hundred thousand years of ice

green for awakening for bring life
back from the dead renewal
in earth and of the earth
is a token of re-birth."

In essence, the ouroboros: in death there is life and vice versa ad infinitum. It's the stage of acceptance after loss and was a beautiful send-off to a very beautiful collection.

Her language is clear, minimal, and vivid. I'm definitely interested in seeing more of her work.