THE ALIVE hour

How do you talk about one death in a year of death.

How do you talk about one life in a year of life.

I want to talk about death like I know.

I don’t know.

So maybe, I want to talk about death like I don’t know.

The thing about death is it makes me angry
The thing about death is you’re supposed to get over the anger at some point
The thing about death is things are constantly dying
The thing about life is things are constantly being born
The thing about trying to make it all better is shut up
The thing about pain is it’s your own and no one can take it from you
The thing about pain is if you hang onto it too long you drown
The thing about death is it’s really good at the drowning kind of pain
The thing about death is black
The thing about death is funeral wreath
The thing about death is the song “on eagle’s wings”
The thing about death is fighting it so hard even though you know it’s pointless
The thing about not fighting is it’s considered weak even if we say it’s not
The thing about death is contradiction
The thing about life is contradiction
The thing about life is one big drawn out sigh
The thing about death is you let go of the inhale and don’t look back.

Welcome to The ALIVE hour.

Illustration: Shannon Colon
Audio: Chloe Riley, story. carefulGIANTS, music.

Things found in real life:

• My face reflected in the helmet my cousin bought to protect himself so he could hug people while going through chemo during covid

  

• This poem “Downhearted” from Ada Limón

  

• This Chicago coffee shop missive:

“Life is always life and will always be Life.”

Things found on the internet:

• This New Yorker essay in which the author reminisces about one of the last significant times she spent with her dad — aboard a gay cruise ship, before he died of AIDS

“That night, we moved together. We felt and sang and danced together—the rhythm binding us, the crowd embracing us, the present moment the only truth there was.”

• This quote from author Hilary Mantel:

“For a long time I felt as if someone else were writing my life. I seemed able to create or interpret characters in fiction, but not able to create or interpret myself. About the time I reached midlife, I began to understand why this was. The book of me was indeed being written by other people: by my parents, by the child I once was, and by my own unborn children, stretching out their ghost fingers to grab the pen. I began this writing in an attempt to seize the copyright in myself.”

• My cousin, before he died, interviewing his daughter about what her experience was like the day both she and he found out he had terminal cancer
  

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