Jonathan E. Wilson confesses, “I wrote these poems in real time—not as reflections on crisis, but as dispatches from inside it.” Each poem has a date, from February 17, 2025, just days after his son was diagnosed with a brain tumor, to November 14 of the same year, a month after his father’s death. Wilson has spent decades traveling to war zones and disasters helping children recover from trauma, understanding it professionally, but in 2025 “trauma came home.” This book documents Wilson’s attempt to keep going in the midst of doubt, fear, uncertainty, and unbearable waiting. Poetry allowed the unthinkable and unspeakable to be written, the uncertainty and fragility of words, the emptiness and loneliness of prayer and faith, the almost deafening interior noise. Yet it also proved to be a container strong enough to hold them, so that Wilson could make it through to grace. As he writes, “My son is alive. These poems are how I held on.”
