Whether through the 3:00 am musings of an insomniac, the signing of an organ donor card, or the relationship between a contemporary Narcissus and Echo, these poems address the sorrows and losses that come to all of us simply because we are living this life. And yet they also show us that the love we bear, for each other and ourselves, is the only possible antidote. For the organ donor, pondering death leads to optimism for a different kind of immortality. For the insomniac, the sleepless "interval before dawn," becomes not merely the hour of greatest darkness, but also the hour of approaching light. Love and grief -- inevitably and with bitter sweetness, that tenderest of all fruit, the human heart, experiences both.