half & half is my first poetry collection about memory, loss, and the subtle, often surreal experience of living through change. Written on either side of my mother’s passing in December 2024, the book is divided into two parts: poems written before the loss, and poems written after.
The first half captures a decade marked by internal dissonance—awkward encounters, spiraling thoughts, strange introspections, and a restless search for meaning. The second half turns inward, toward grief—not as spectacle, but as texture. The poems live in domestic spaces and inherited rituals: crossword puzzles, cigarettes, macaroni salad, road trips, and offhand comments that now feel sacred. There’s no big revelation—just the quiet presence of what remains.
Named after how my mother took her coffee, half & half is about the space between things: between what was and what changed, between humor and heartbreak, between detachment and devotion. It’s a book that doesn’t seek resolution so much as reflection.
half & half is an intimate, lyrical offering for anyone who’s lived through loss—or is still learning how to carry it.
Conor Garrison 