How does a family heal from brutal trauma? The speaker in Relative Hearts faces the burdens of both his namesake and his past by digging to uncover personal details while there are still witnesses to tell (their versions of) the truth. Having endured a world in which queerness equals endangerment, the speaker struggles to untangle his own survival mechanisms and come to terms with how prolonged physical abuse has shaped his, and his family's, identities. Propelled by longing to find a way forward without shame, these unflinching poems embrace the broken world with compassion and fierce hope.