When I was young I use to workout my death every time I rode a rollercoaster.
I would give myself a glittery gold sticker for not giving into the fear of the ascent,
another if I did not puke on the first big drop, three if I didn’t fall out raising my hands on turns.
I would walk off feeling dizzy with a savage ringing in my ears but proud that I survived— golden, glistening, unbruised.
Death was something that happened, maybe, to one of my grandparents, goldfish, parakeets, roadkill.
The dead lived in photo albums, memories of flushing toilets, decaying bits of backyard newsprints, a splayed creature seen on a car trip.
I knew it as the fake skull trapped under a lion’s paw at the zoo, the frequent dreams of dancing, skeletons lifting me out of my skin,
dressing me in fine burial clothes, until I would burst from the coffin scream-laughing, my mother soothing me in her arms, asking if I was okay.
My mother is gone now. My father too. Death is a celebration of life that invites me to the party once or twice a year.
I no longer fear rollercoasters, having survived cancer’s dips. Every night I ride one in gold star dreams, shouting, hands high in the air, knowing the plunge will come— and come again
The poem itself is an odyssey, personal and visceral. It’s an invitation to something difficult (not only death but also conceiving death) from which we tend to look the other way. This is moving. Thank you.
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