Woven from cotton and acrylic yarn, "grief has no gills" presents a richly layered textile field in which figural forms emerge from and dissolve back into a ground of interlaced color. Completed in 2020, the work measures a commanding 203.2 by 203.2 centimeters, filling the viewer's field of vision with the density and intimacy of handwoven surface. Brackens constructs meaning through the loom itself, treating the centuries-old craft of weaving as a primary language for exploring Black life, vulnerability, mourning, and endurance. The title draws on a quietly surreal logic, grief imagined as a creature unable to breathe in the medium it inhabits, pointing to forms of loss and emotional experience that lack the tools to survive their own conditions. Brackens has developed a singular visual vocabulary that draws on folk traditions, queer identity, and the African American experience, threading these concerns into works that feel both mythological and urgently personal. In this piece, his characteristic blending of narrative and abstraction invites prolonged looking, as figures and symbols reveal themselves gradually within the textile's surface. The warm and muted palette, combined with the tactile presence of yarn, gives the work an almost devotional quality, as though the act of weaving itself constitutes a form of witness or care. Held in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "grief has no gills" reflects the institutional recognition Brackens has earned as one of the most compelling voices working in fiber-based practice today. For collectors, the work offers both material distinction and conceptual depth, functioning as an object of beauty that carries genuine emotional and cultural weight.