When the gladiator starts walking wordlessly into the pale horizon, hands trailing in knee-deep grass, you know this is movie shorthand for oh shit he's dead and his soul is on the way to the afterlife. My poet friendmessages me to say we are or should … | By Luisa A. Igloria on June 28, 2024 | When the gladiator starts walking wordlessly into the pale horizon, hands trailing in knee-deep grass, you know this is movie shorthand for oh shit he's dead and his soul is on the way to the afterlife. My poet friend messages me to say we are or should be writing just for the sheer joy of creation and being in conversation with the dead— I agree one hundred percent. In that the world constantly, intensely, makes us aware of our own mortality, I guess you could say we are also always in conversation with ourselves. These are sober conversations, but sometimes they can be ridiculous or foolish. Am I, are you, most alive in words; or when, at the height of pleasurably licking the $5 tamarind popsicle at the farmers market, the tangy sweet plops onto the hot pavement in front of you? So sad, to lose what you thought was safely in your grip. Most everyone I ask about whether they would live their whole lives over again exactly the same way if given another chance say yes, they would. Because if you touched even one thread, one hair, it would no longer be your life. Perhaps you'd be rid of all the mediocre jobs and failed relationships, but you'd no longer even be with the people you know and love right now. And so I try to sit in this field without panicking about my dwindling years. Late afternoon light gashes the tips of marsh grass, and I try to forgive myself all the wrong turns and missed connections.
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