In the Field Between Us by Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison

I’ve never read a collection of poems that so saliently addresses a life lived with a disability, in the shadows of medical intervention both the ones that linger behind you and the ones that are cast ahead of you, and how the scared body in pain exists in this beautiful and terrifying world. I cried over my coffee more than once as I read these intimate letters between Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison because I found echoed there my experiences, for the first time in literature not found in an obscure medical study found in the Google rabbit hole after a night of pain keeps me awake and wondering why and how I got there and if I am alone with it. I’m not. I have these overheard conversations, like clues toward an answer.

Again and again, came to mind the image of sea glass. Broken, ragged, sharp, raw, but through the tumble of waves something beautiful, smoothed, a story in its own right. These poems were the waves, I am the broken bit of glass from a bottle.