I Give You Otters

This week, a side effect of one of the medications I’m on sort of hit me from out of nowhere. I’m distracted and sad and hurting and trying to pretend like everything’s OK.

And it is. Of course. Or it will be. But I’m finding it hard to concentrate long enough to stay with the internal query that drives my work: What did you really mean? What else? What else?

It was a little after three yesterday afternoon when I finally conceded the essay I’ve been shaping for weeks and meant to finish over the past few days wouldn’t be ready.

Imagining a week without showing up for you, without meeting you in the comments made everything feel infinitely worse. So I give you

River otters

“Thank you,” I whispered when their grunts stopped my melancholy. What else?

This sunset in time-lapse

I forget how bright twilight is. What else?

This poem by ALOK

the deepest breath

on the other side of now

when this is all over

i want to attend a funeral every day

i will sit at the back,

silent crying

when they ask how i knew her?

i will smile through the tears

“i didn’t”

but

i loved her

because, once upon a time

she breathed, which means that the particles that touched

the deepest parts of her, she exhaled them

& somehow they found their way to me

i am the product of everything that is & was

all that has lived &

all that has died on this earth

i am sorry that it took a virus to help me remember

that simple fact—

that we breathe the same air.

—Alok Vaid-Menon in your wound / my garden

Aw. I breathe. What else.

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How are you?

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