Abruptio–A mother’s worst fear is realized at 23 weeks into the pregnancy, and a baby girl is born at the edge of viability. Melissa Fournier shares her profound grief for her daughter’s brief life in these intimate poems that reflect the power of grace to transform sorrow into resilience and hope.

EARLY PRAISE:

Fournier knits fragments together into the baby’s shroud to show us, the readers, the empty home, the mother’s weeping breasts, this child Camille Grace, this family, this world, its grief.

–Dr. Rita Charon, Columbia University Narrative Medicine

Melissa Fournier’s poems mirror the presence of her lost child: small, exquisite, unknown. I’m reminded that trustworthy voices are those who do not turn away from pain or love. Fournier is one of those voices.

–Teresa Scollon, poet author, To Embroider the Ground with Prayer

This poet has an astonishing ability to elicit the ache of grief, her skill with metaphor leading us to understand what is inherently incomprehensible.

–Joanna White, poet and music professor, Drumskin and Bones