Looking at the Ground

"Reading this book wasn’t an easy experience, but that’s not a negative thing. Most of us read to forget, for a little while, how heavy the world can feel. But this collection kept pulling me into its cracks—into places that were unclear, yet somehow familiar. There were parts where I felt like I didn’t fully understand what had happened, and maybe that was partly on me. I couldn’t bring myself to deny myself the experience of reading these poems one after another. The words felt honest, and more often than not, they seemed to speak deeper than the stories themselves. At times, they felt almost like a kind of surgery, opening up an emotion just to see what was underneath it. There were so many little references and moments that felt like they meant more than they seemed to. I couldn’t always tell whether I was reading too much into them, or whether they really were meant to carry something more. In the end, I enjoyed reading this book. It was a different kind of experience for me—not romantic enough to make me dream, and not dark or bitter enough to leave me sad. It simply made me look at the ground a little longer, and at the many different faces of people. And I think that made it worth reading."