Last week, I shared a poem titled "Math." After my dad's 2019 death from multiple myeloma, I wrote several poems about him, about death, about grief. "Math" and "The Shot" were the first two. I hope they stand on their own feet, but I also think they're in conversation.

Early drafts of "The Shot" came in summer 2020, well into lockdown. The poem was inspired by my dad's illness and death; it would've existed without a pandemic.

But in my experience, specificity resonates universally. The personal can be global. And while every loss is different, every loss is felt.