The story in poems reads like a movie and exposes the bitter compromises a couple will make with abuse and love. Lyrical, accomplished poems examine and ultimately reveal "why we stay" as the poet recovers herself and her love through the language of healing. Courageous, honest, sometimes funny, the poet writes the book her friends said she'd have to wait to publish until her husband died, but he read the poems and, as proof of the couple's bond, told her to go ahead and send it out, "It's good and it's your life. You deserve to be heard."