Sometimes, in the Afterwards: Meditations on Loss

By Mary Simmerling Ph.D.

Sometimes, in the Afterwards is a stark and deeply moving exploration of grief, memory, and what remains in the wake of loss. Through precise and unflinching language, Mary Simmerling navigates the spaces between past and present, presence and absence, love and its aftermath. These poems are meditations on how memory lingers in the body, in landscapes, and in the smallest details of daily life. They do not offer easy resolutions, but instead invite the reader to sit with loss, to witness how it lingers in the body, in landscapes, in the smallest details of daily life. With clarity and restraint, Simmerling honors both the weight of sorrow and the quiet resilience that follows. For anyone who has grieved, Sometimes, in the Afterwards is a book that does not turn away-but instead stays, offering language to give voice to what so often feels unspeakable.

Mary Simmerling's evocative book title, "Sometimes, in the Afterwards" combines two central themes in her spare, thoughtful poems-momentary glimpses of chiaroscuro that emerge in shadowy presences of past. "Incandescent water" is a central image that shimmers, mirrors, drowns, washes clean. A babe in the womb coming into the world as a sister leaves the world is a moving image that often rises to the surface. Birth/death, love/loss, light/dark glisten-"light penetrates the broken parts." Nature is place of cruelty and solace-talon marks in snow, yet under "old friends the pine boughs." Each poem ponders relationships in time and liminal space, body wisdom, witness, wonder-each a moment "of being/ and becoming," full of gratitude despite duende-Each poem a star "shining in the darkening/ winter sky." - Kate Marshall Flaherty

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1068828501
• ISBN13: 9781068828508
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Write Where We Belong Press
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"