Only those writers grateful to be alive, having come close to losing that gift through accident, illness or war, can write profoundly and perceptively about death. Death-that aspect of being human we fear most-we do everything to keep it at arms-length. In her deeply personal collection of poetry, Jess Avelino Flores embraces the subject as she embraces life-leaving nothing out: not her own brush with death, nor the numerous deaths of the disabled and terminally sick children and adults she cares for full time. With great poetic sensibility, she addresses as well the daily threat of death during her brief journey as their caregiver. In the few years her "kids" live (and many of these "kids" are adults), she becomes as well their mother, their friend, their only contact with joy and comfort, most having been abandoned due to their severe disabilities. She writes with heartbreaking honesty about the misfortune of her charges whose parents gave up on their lives. In her poems you will meet these special children, their bodies broken by nature or the cruelty of abusive, brutal parents. Jess Avelino Flores is their voice, one who, as a trained caregiver, informs us not only about the slow painful death of the body, but how best to live life after surviving the emotional and spiritual deaths she experiences regularly whenever a much-loved ward passes. Avelino Flores is a superb poet. In this, her seventh collection of poetry, you will sink into beautifully written poems-lyric expression that transforms the subject of death into works of art. Her poetry is both sad and healing, as she weaves together the language, images and symbols that best express her experience with nature's most unfortunate children. is a book filled with purpose and resolve. Her readers will come to know the survivor's dilemma: the caretaker, the surrogate mother, who must live on after another loss so that another broken being might enjoy a little comfort in their short time on earth.