The Year Our Grandmothers Died

In 2024, I lost my grandmother after three long years of her battling an unnamed illness. Unfortunately, in the same year, my partner lost his grandmother as well. As we faced death together, at times in different stages, I witnessed how losing the people that raised our parents, and us, affected every bridge within and between our families. This book honors all of the heaviness, distance, intimacy, devastation, questioning and humanness that we found and faced through the love required to experience perpetual grief. Michaela Godding is a 28-year-young queer poet and singer that is a current Poetry MFA candidate at George Mason University. Her debut chapbook, dwelling, was published by Bottlecap Press. More of her work can be found in Rabble Review Issues 4, 5 and 7, in the Connecticut Bards Poetry Review Book of 2022, and on the side of Arlington, VA's public buses, which feature her poem "I Pray Often". You can follow her current projects, interviews, podcast appearances and upcoming publications on her instagram, @michaelagodding.