Focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, Aoife Lyall's The Day Before beautifully captures the ordinary moments in life that crystallise in the face of crisis and threat. These intimate and meticulous poems mark the lived experience of someone who must navigate a world she no longer understands, exploring first steps and last breaths, milestones, millstones, emigration, fly-tipping and the entire world to be found in the space behind the front door. Tender, challenging, and historically significant, The Day Before asks what it means when home is the one place you cannot leave, and the one place you cannot go.