Janik Coat’s children book Hippopposites has made me doubt that opposites really exist. Or, rather, I now wonder what are opposite? Are opposites not already unified in a way that we might assume opposites could never truly be? If opposites oppose each other, then how do we account for their status as pairs. Small and large are opposites, but they are united as a pair. In that pairing, they are close together. They are bound by a kind of negative magnetism (opposites attract). Ultimately, this is the lesson I have learned from this book. Opposites are intimate, and that intimacy undoes certainties about what individual words mean and how they function in the world. So: What is grief’s opposite?