The poems in Mallory Tater’s Lockers Are for Bearcats Only spill out from the confluence of grief and water. After losing one of her closest friends, the poet began swimming laps—part meditation, part therapy, part escapism—immersed in the depths of the public pool. There, she found herself haunted by the strange tension between fitness / surrender and memory / motion where ghosts of girlhood, catholicism, and addiction rose to the surface. These themes haunt Lockers Are for Bearcats Only – a tender, unguarded exploration of loss, embodiment, and the currents that carry us through life with and without those who shaped us.