The Origins of Crossing the Sea of Glass

Crossing the Sea of Glass began as poems I wrote in the wake of my uncle’s death in 2022. I had no intentions of creating a collection, I was merely writing my feelings as I went through my grief. Writing is therapy for me and I had many emotions to work out. Because I wrote as I processed, my poems had a narrative arc that was unintentional. However, once I figured that out, I knew I was going to turn them into a collection.

Reading the collection makes it obvious that my relationship with my uncle was complicated. There were many things about him that were admirable. He was the definition of a ride or die. If you were close to him, he would do anything for you, even at the expense of himself. There was a selflessness in him that I envied. However, he could also be intrusive and obnoxious. For his part, he was only the kindly uncle who wanted to dray me out of my shell, but as a child I could never appreciate it.

Beyond that, even at a young age, I felt that he and I were similar in some ways, almost like a reflection of who I could grow up to be. As someone who has struggled with irrational self-hatred for much of my life, I resented that. Though this was my own struggle to overcome.

But, as this book makes obvious, my uncle was an addict. Those who have dealt with addiction or have had a loved one who was an addict can imagine the struggle that brought into the family. This was an angle I thought about as I worked on this collection. I wanted to show that the hurt was not just my own so there are poems in here that reflect upon others in my life and the impact my uncle’s passing had on them. Or at least my perceptions of that impact.

In the end, I decided upon a nautical theme for this collection as my uncle was an avid fisherman when he was alive. And many of my memories with him involved fishing. I wanted to both write my experiences with grief and processing everything, while also paying tribute to the person he was, both the good and the bad and present the full human that he was.

My main goal for this collection is to hopefully provide solace to those who have experience with addiction and grief. To show that, while no voyage across the sea of glass is the same, no one is ever truly alone on that journey.