I was hesitant to pick up In Love as a newlywed. I am superstitious enough to worry about inviting misfortune by way of acknowledging it. But when I stood under the chuppah last November and married my husband, I remember thinking about death.
Just as the form held the poems together, writing the poems held me together.
And although none of these compare even remotely to the loss of life and living, they inflict a particular kind of pain because they are set against the backdrop of such monumental tragedy. One of those small sorrows is the loss of lipstick—and by this I mean red lipstick because for me, that’s the only kind there is.
