How to Survive the First Twenty-Four Hours After a Death
a poem + audio
Article voiceover
I sit in a restaurant eating vegan pho on an overcast New Year’s Day. People are sitting beside me planning their resolutions out, releasing themselves from the prior year mistakes & failures. I bring the scalding broth to my lips, somewhere a poem is dislodged from the break in reality. Somewhere, you are still alive. The clock on the restaurant’s wall covers the entirety of Viet Nam; The north and the south united as one. The war is long over, but people often forget boundaries on maps are always moving. What the hell were we thinking that life was permanent, that anything was fixed. It always comes down green. The grass stains between your fingers, now you return to dirt. Nothing like that is worth dying for but getting old is even worse. A rupture between what always was and everything that comes after; I haven’t been able to find words since. In every direction they evade me. A minefield of clichés hides under every rock waiting for me to step on them, scattering my insides across the land. God, have you shattered me again. How many times must I return to this demilitarized zone, where no word is ever good enough. I search for you everywhere there, but only memories come fleetingly like sunlight through trees hitting my face. Not even in dreams have I seen you. My decades on earth not enough to fill in the gaps between what is and what should have been. Why can’t I ever remember this: Humans aren’t rational animals. They are ruled by pride and wrath such rabid jackals, tearing through their own innards. Still, I know your heart beats somewhere in time we are speaking to each other again, smiling at a funeral, of all places.