A Finalist for the 2025 Last Syllable Book Awards. Waiting inside each of us are lives we can't imagine living or even wanting-until upheaval or loss or what appears to be a profound mistake-means we must become these people and live these lives, after all. Here are poems for those days when we wake up inside some raw, unchartable place. Some trembling songs to companion us in the dark, as we go. Reminders that help and hope may be waiting for us where we never would have looked. These poems invite us to recognize and welcome, even to bless, who we truly are as we dare to set forth on paths we never asked for-which are, after all-the only way home, from here.