Summary

The collection begins with the introductory poem “Soot,” which sees its speaker meditating over a wide variety of inner thoughts and truths, both subjective and objective. “Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust,” they say, going on to acknowledge how “clumsy and gloomless” humans must appear to such a divine entity (1). The speaker suggests a former tragic loss that they are “afraid to keep … in the story,/worried that [they] might bring back to life,” the memory and the pain they associate with it (1). However, this desire to protect oneself appears fruitless as they keep dreaming they are a creature “pulling out [their] claws/one by one to sell in a market” (1). The poem concludes with the speaker describing their birth as a fall from heaven where “upon landing, the ground/embraced [them] sadly, with the gentleness/of someone delivering tragic news...