Some poems are windows, little illuminations, strangers' houses lit at night. Some poems are departures or arrivals, a push or pull toward a place or idea or truth. Some are brief dances, spaces for movement and expression and exploration. I think of them all as invitations: come inside, look at this, join me, head that way, let's see where this might lead.

This visceral debut collection is a dance across the decades. In thirty spare and gripping poems, Diane Lowell Wilder recasts midlife as a second coming of age: a time of new vulnerabilities and strengths, breakdown and renewal, constraint and release. In the process, she lands on vital sources of affirmation and resilience—in being a parent, in embracing change, in letting go, in reclaiming agency. Here is the aftermath of divorce and the landscape of later romance, the strain of watching parents age, the anxieties of motherhood, an aching hip, bold moves, fresh starts. Ever aware that the past and future are always bound up in the present, Wilder shows us how a poetic exploration of personal history, even when it means wrestling with loss, can help us gain perspective and maybe even a new sense of freedom and direction.