Читать книгу Let’s Not Live on Earth - Sarah Blake - Страница 17

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Ok, so you know someone who died horrifically

Ok, so you know an animal who died horrifically

In a fire let’s say or a building’s collapse

Or, ok, so you know someone who’s dying right now

Except maybe not horrifically

Except your idea of horrifically is changing

The way a gun death seemed less horrific than the gas chambers

Until the country kept ignoring gun deaths

Now they seem horrific

And then I really try to consider the word horrific

And horror and I think about how I only watch horror movies

In black neighborhoods where they make jokes

The whole time about the dumb white girl that’s going back into the house

Until I’m pealing with laughter in my seat

And I think so much of my country, they are dumb white girls going back

Into the house, except they’re men, too, and I’m offended by

The attribution of feminine qualities or I’m offended

By the qualities deemed feminine because I’m one tough bitch

Who never has to be one because I don’t leave the house

I don’t know if I’m mourning you before you die

I don’t know if language can write me away or into anything

I’m a butterfly. I’m a pig. I was never in a body to begin with.

I remember as a child trying to think of what animal

I wanted to come back as and not being able to think of one

Because everything is prey to something and my luck

As a human seemed too great, irreplicable, next time I’d for sure

Be a child kidnapped or molested or abused

A mother on her way out of the Y last night told another mother

How she pinches her son because she doesn’t know what else to do

And then makes a joke about how she’s going to kill him

And it’s not a fucking joke, it’s not one

And I wonder if that would be a horrific death just because

It’s his mother committing the act

That seems like enough even if the death itself isn’t torturous

Or inhumane, and I don’t know what to do with that word anymore

Because almost every action I’ve seen lately lacks compassion

And every life I’ve seen lately has misery in it

Last night a man in my area tried to run a woman’s child over

Then got out of his car and said, “You dirty Jew, I should kill all of you.

I should come back with a gun and kill all of you.”

There are a lot of reasons for people to point a gun at me I guess

I might die before you I guess

Because that’s our country right now and either way

We’ll die without each other a little

And if I come back as a cricket, I’ll seek out the bird

If I come back as a mouse, I’ll seek out the fox

I could do this cycle a hundred times and still enjoy it