Swelling Dark

<p>In <em>Swelling Dark</em> Indira Devos lifts the covers and beckons you closer offering a space at the edge of the pillow where the softest confessions are made. With a voice that is by turns wry prayerful painfully earnest and delightfully self-skeptical this debut collection drifts like midnight melancholy with imagery that glows even in half-light. These poems slip between lullabies and warnings tenderness and shadow inviting the reader to rest in the in-between.</p><p></p><p>Structured in sections named for the unruly children of Nyx goddess of night the collection becomes a descent toward whatever truth remains in the uneasy spiritual residue left behind when you've outgrown your own myth. Here dreams bruise. Grief curls against yearning. Identity flickers like a candle refusing to decide whether to burn or go out. Devos gently traces each page like a bare back with the quiet devastations and small resurrections that shape a life lived in honest darkness.</p><p></p><p><em>Swelling Dark: The [Anti]hero's Journey</em> is a refreshingly and hauntingly honest debut-one that refuses salvation yet still reaches for it in the night palms open.</p>