The Archive of Almosts: July 1st

To most people, July is just a month. It is mid-summer heat, a turning page on a calendar, a marker of time.

But to him, July was a person.

She was the first to melt a winter that had lasted five years. She was the spark in a crowded room, the stranger who walked through an open door and made a home in a heart that had long been closed. She was the one who made him believe that he was finally ready to feel again.

But seasons change, and the warmest months can turn cold without warning.

The Archive of Almosts is a collection of fifteen poems chronicling a modern tragedy. It captures the dizzying highs of finding a connection that feels like fate, and the confusing, suffocating lows of watching that connection fade. It is a story about the danger of letting your guard down, the blindness of trust, and the specific silence that follows a storm.

This is a book for anyone who has ever loved a temporary person. This is a book for the things we almost had.