A compassionate meditation on the transformative power of relationships, Soft Shelters examines what it is to become home for another person, how to shelter those we love without losing ourselves in the process. These poems ask us to consider the gifts left by dear ones who drop into—and sometimes back out of—our lives; how the love we have to give the world is in many ways a patchwork of the love we have received. Like offering a pulled thread from one end while weaving new fabric on the other, this work is both an unravelling and a becoming.

Marie Metaphor Specht explores the double-edged gift that is caregiving through the lens of queer motherhood, intimacy, and our complex relationship with the natural world. In a world that gives us much to worry about, these poems ask us to reframe our worry as a transmutation of love. In a world that asks us to be stronger every day, this book finds unexpected strength in softness.