Thereafter

By Emily Rosko

Thereafter is a fearless meditation on love after fracture, tracing the relationships that shape us long after they begin to unravel. Through luminous, formally inventive poems, it reveals the beauty, violence, and persistence of human attachment.

Across six interconnected movements, Thereafter explores the shifting bonds between friends, siblings, lovers, and the self. These poems inhabit the uneasy space where intimacy meets estrangement, charting the slow erosion of childhood friendships, the distance that can grow between family members, and the cycles of longing, devotion, and retreat that define romantic love. Moving between Midwestern landscapes and coastal gardens, memory and the body, the collection maps the emotional terrain of grief, desire, forgiveness, and survival.

Employing forms such as pantoums, sestinas, and odes alongside free verse, the poems use structure as both restraint and release, holding emotions that threaten to spill beyond language. Gardens bloom and wither, rivers run cold, and stars disappear overhead while the daily work of living continues below. Throughout, the natural world mirrors the inner life, revealing both its fragility and endurance.

Rather than offering easy consolation, Rosko confronts the difficult questions that accompany every lasting loss: How do we survive those we cannot stop loving? What remains when someone becomes unreachable? Is forgiveness possible after irrevocable harm? With emotional precision and unflinching honesty, Thereafter argues that love's greatest power lies not in permanence, but in its ability to transform us--even in absence.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1629223352
• ISBN13: 9781629223353
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: University of Akron Press
• Length: 105 Pages