Callie Grey’s first collection of poems is a crystalline reflection on two teenage years of fairytale visions, dark red emotions, and black mental anguish. It weaves through themes of self-harm and innocence, death and delight, lost pasts and lost futures, food and emptiness, love and devastation. Responses from a friend retrace the process of unburying these painful and precious secrets.
With gossamer vulnerability and flinty courage, Ms. Grey invites readers to not just her reality but Reality. In answer to my own lifelong prayers for wholeness, God corrects my vision, shows me darker, deeper, more devious parts of myself, the world, and wounds. By contrast, His solid-gold brightness reveals the value and beauty of myself and others. These poems—with their frankness, fear factor, beauty, intelligence, and dogged genuineness—are the rare gifts of someone willing to share darkness and desperation for light without tying up any loose ends or leaving us to feel comfortable living fractured, shallow lives. They are a trapdoor into self-reflection that our culture—particularly Christian culture—urgently needs. The commentary of Dr. Vishanoff creates a tender dialogue between a hurting, loving artist and a hurting, loving friend, fortifying hope that honesty, protection, and freedom can exist in a relationship between an older man and a young woman.
