Episode 3: My Family Writes a Will

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can. This week’s poem takes us into a family during the years-long process of drafting and writing a will, which in turn, requires a hovering awareness of death. This family’s experience asks us to redefine what hovering means, and how we choose to greet something that we’ve been taught to fear or feel uncomfortable about. It emphasizes the need to make space for conversations, thoughts, feelings, and emotions well in advance of death. 

I’ll share it with you now:

Shadows cake the air that trails our bodies—

wool cloaks slithering

up

the backs of couches and kitchen chairs,

across

the walls and down the stairs.

It’s taken us years to carefully 

craft 

this type of clay—to

think of

editing 

phrases and

transcribing

conversation, need, and hope

as treasured decay. 

And to

believe 

that death cannot 

overstay,

because this will we’re

writing

is more like paper mache.

Not one of us is presently

dying.

Our shadows, rich black soil berths on the floor beneath each step,

are not deathbeds

waiting

for us to

fall 

backward on our heads.

Though seemingly dark, body-shaped coffins, 

shadows are, rather, a place for life’s quiet, rebirth, rest, and growth

because, if we

love

death thoroughly, they will

say:

by the love you’ve 

left, 

I’m deeply impressed,

by not

fearing

me, I 

offer

you the sea, or perhaps a tree,

or anywhere else you wish to be 

free.

Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages? 

Let me know in the comments on Instagram or feel free to email me your thoughts: mikaela@weareunsinkable.com.