First published 2019
O'Rourke confronts the body's betrayals through verses that map physical breakdown and emotional upheaval. Her poems track the disorienting experience of chronic illness, where familiar routines dissolve into medical appointments and uncertain diagnoses. Between formal verse and lyric essays, she examines the gap between wanting a child and facing bodily limitations. The collection moves through hospital corridors and treatment rooms, capturing moments when the body rebels against expectations. O'Rourke writes with clinical precision about pain that resists description, about loss that settles into daily life like sediment. Her formally ambitious pieces give shape to experiences that often remain unspoken. The work earned recognition as a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and appeared on the New York Times Book Review's list of best poetry books. Cathy Park Hong called it O'Rourke's most brilliant collection. These pieces avoid sentimentality while honoring the weight of physical suffering and the persistence of hope amid medical uncertainty.
Genres: contemporary, poetry, biography-memoir, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, medical-trauma
Period: 21st-Century
128 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: medical-trauma, mental-illness