Many thanks to Katie Vasquez and the folks at Reading the Body Book Club for this generous and thoughtful review of Tea Gerbeza‘s HOW I BEND INTO MORE.

“When all your body knows is constant pain, it can begin to feel like an unwanted but familiar companion to your everyday existence. I’ve had varying experiences throughout my life with this same feeling. Where does your pain end, and where do you begin? Or what happens when you begin taking a medication to modify chemicals in your brain (something I have experienced)? That fear, unfortunately, has led me to ignore my body’s needs out of my brain’s fear, wondering how much of myself is intertwined with what I know to be a problematic, damaging state of being. And if I treat it, what will be left of me? Our pain does and does not make us who we are—the two can never be fully unwound from one another. That is something Gerbeza has perfectly rendered in this collection.I loved this collection”- Katie Vasquez