Kristin LaFollette | In the Woods | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Kristin LaFollette is the author of Intern Year (Harbor Editions, 2026), Hematology (winner of the 2021 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize), and Body Parts (winner of the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Prize). She received her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University and is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana.

Kristin LaFollette's Website

Also by Kristin LaFollette: Intern Year Hematology Planet X

May 27, 2026

Kristin LaFollette

In the Woods

I It was late July. I had a cold and a cast on my right arm. I hadn’t slept. Someone called me Christina. What I wanted to say but didn’t: I am someone’s daughter. I am someone’s wife. I wasn’t born in the summer. I wasn’t made for this heat. II The room was filled with plants & I found one in a white pot that I wanted to keep for myself. A man told me to be careful when I bent to lift it, as if he could sense the thinness of my sutured skin, ready to break open and bleed honey and meltwater all over the floorboards — III With our matriarch gone first, I questioned if longevity was earned or if it was inherent, bloodborne. I didn’t know the answer, so I made my body into a shadowbox, clothed myself in hairwork jewelry: an altar of memory, a prayer for defense and preservation — IV If I’m being honest, I shouldn’t have taken any of the plants: I’ve never been any good at keeping them alive —

I wrote this poem about my grandmother's passing in 2013. We knew her death was coming, so my family sat up with her all night in the hospital until she passed. The exhaustion and feelings of grief and loss I experienced in the aftermath were only further complicated by a recent joint fusion surgery and the onset of an upper respiratory illness. The poem attempts to bring all of this together to convey the complexities of grief, both after losing a loved one and coming to terms with the numerous ways our bodies can fail us.