Bird Body offers powerful, complex, and incisive glimpses into the tensions that lie at the heart of survivorship. “Everyone wants you to stop writing / about it, this unkillable thing, enough, enough. / You have been loved, yes, / you are fortunate,” she writes, pushing back against demands that society makes of survivors: don’t speak, stay open, forgive, be grateful, move on. This forceful debut investigates virtue and shame, asking, “what use does good have / in this old world? And what shade of it are you // today?”

Fay-Stindt’s work resists easy conclusions, encouraging us to hold space for trauma and ambiguous grief alongside “every earthly wonder.” Many survivors will recognize their experiences in these poems. This chapbook is a form of care and advocacy that refuses shame and prioritizes connection. Art that addresses trauma shouldn’t have to be beautiful—just to tell one’s story is enough—but Bird Body is, and I cannot imagine a greater gift.

—Madeleine Barnes, author of You Do Not Have To Be Good, Women’s Work, Light Experiments, and The Mark My Body Draws in Light