Sarah Kay
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
This is how my mother and I speak of dying.
The thing you turn away by letting in.
I'm tired of April.
It's killed our matriarchs, and in the backyard I've planted an olive sapling in the wrong soil.
There is a droopiness to the branches that reminds me of my friend, the one who calls to ask what's the point, or the patients who come to me swarmed with misery and astonishment, their hearts like newborns after the first needle.
What now?
They all want to know.
What now?
I imagine it like a beach.
There is a magnificent sandcastle that has taken years to build.
A row of pink seashells for gables, rooms of pebbles and driftwood.
This is your life.
Then comes the affair.
Nagging blood work.
A freeway pileup.
The tide moves in.
The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds.
There is debris.
A tatter of seagrass and blood from where you scratched your own arm trying to fight the current.
It might not happen for a long time.