When the dream of love is twisted into violence and abuse, that first tender spark suddenly ignites the whole room around the dreamer-fire creeping up the carpet, curtains, and bedposts. But if she's lucky, the blaring of the smoke alarm jolts her from her restless sleep just in time. "Waking up was what hurt- / Flames piercing through my stomach, / Burning through my body like a vacant home." In her harrowing collection, Through Shimmering Smoke, poet Emma Rose Garcia opens herself like a tinderbox, bringing all those combustible secrets and scars to light. In the smoke-choked aftermath of her rape, the military structure that she trusts instead leaves her to claw her own way out-through deep depression and lawyers, PTSD and court dates, suicidal ideation and broken no-contact orders. "Friction forces its frail walls to collapse, / My mind suffocated by the debris / As it caves in on top of me," the poet says. But in spite of all the reasons she is told to give up, she persists. She chooses life-her own. Through Shimmering Smoke is a lyrical lament for the person she used to be. After the embers and ash have stopped falling around her like snow, poet Emma Rose Garcia pulls her own still-burning heart from the rubble and rebuilds.
