“Some days you can’t breathe; you know what that feel like: When you are bored at night and everything bad is loud and important take to the streets. It’s a one-time thing, this life. You’ve got to move. When in doubt, always move. Or you ain’t going to make it.”
An autobiographical poem or a poetic autobiography, Yrsa Daley-Ward’s memoir is a testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit, its ability to contain an immense darkness and release it in waves of destruction, love, and poetry. As a child, Yrsa and her little brother are raised partly by their strict, religious grandparents and by their single mother. As Yrsa gets older, her body becomes a “haunted unreal place”, where mental illness reigns. Her body is the source of her power as well as her fear. Her story gives voice to the chaos of sexuality, addiction, depression, and anxiety, and the potential for redemption in the form of self-expression.
ode to shelf-care 