This Title Has Turned to Ash

/ Ada Simone / 1 Comment

The weight of books in her hand feels like air, the sound of her voice an echo, the beat of her heart a disappearing note. It’s been eleven days since her life started trailing her with an eraser, cloaking everything in a fog of loss.

Immediately after eating, her breath sours with lack of food. She looks down at her hands, notices chipped polish, the gold ring she always wears, and when she looks up, the image of her hands fades to nothing, like she didn’t just see them, like they were never there at all.

She thinks, “I am disappearing,” but a second later that thought too fades. Panic flutters like a butterfly wing and she can sense the tremor, but cannot name it. Even if she could, the name would soon drift away. She’s fighting a current she cannot see or name.

Can you know something you cannot remember? This is what she would wonder, if only she could pin down the words. But the words and the wonder have already turned to ash.

someday/ right now

/ Ada Simone / 2 Comments

Someday I’ll ache for the moments I’m living right now/ newborn smiles in the morning, nerf battles after work/stepping on Legos and crumbs and hot wheels tracks/ reaching for Oreos only to find the cream scraped out by 5-year-old teeth/ the smell of Lennon’s hair after the bath and the way Nolan yells for me out the window when he sees me pull in/ the missing chunk of Nolan’s hair, that kindergarten right of passage/ our baby asleep on my chest/ the sun floating through my classroom/ the sound of so many keyboards clicking/ the kind of exhaustion that lets me go to sleep at night without putting all the dishes away/ the time someone asked me to define love and the answer was you and you and you/ the way my life fits like a good pair of jeans/ I could cry I miss it so much/ this life I’m living/ right now

When You Aren’t Dying

/ Ada Simone / 3 Comments

I keep thinking about our last conversations, spilled across ten feet of space because chemo meant I couldn’t come close with hands that touched countertops and dollar bills. I keep wishing our last conversations could have been closer, whispered into ears during a hug.

I know it was only physical space, but sometimes at night, when the tears begin to fall, I wonder if the space made my words clatter clumsily to the floor. I wonder what we talked about. I wonder if I tried to throw my words far enough.

I wish I could have a last conversation that felt like a last conversation.

I wish we had talked about things that mattered, but everything matters when you aren’t dying.

You Are Here

/ Ada Simone / 4 Comments

Before my appointment in November, I bought Ben and Jerry’s because I had a feeling.

My pre-emptive grief started to gather, turning into words and then sentences.

I wrote, “I’m too familiar with what forced neutrality looks like on an ultrasound tech’s face,”

Wrote, “I’m too familiar with what happens next,”

Wrote, “the orange bottle of pills meant to help my body expel a failed dream.”

I wrote and wrote and wrote and then I held my breath.

But the tech’s face had nothing to hide and my doctor tossed a casual, “looks good” over his shoulder as if I hadn’t packed a suitcase full of grief.

I’m still unpacking that suitcase, still afraid my anxiety might be intuition, afraid too much joy will lead to a sorrow too expansive.

But you, my Lennon girl, are kicking my ribs and pushing against my lungs. You are here, at least for now, but hopefully to stay, and I am telling myself to stop missing things before I have to. The sun will set, but still it touches my skin.

So, I’ll delete the “for nows,”, stop cowering beneath a blanket of caveats, and whisper: you are here, you are here, you are here, my girl, and I love you.

in heaven

/ Ada Simone / 6 Comments

the sons tear up and don’t avoid eye contact with their dads/ the dads are tearing up too/ Sarah McLachlan doesn’t play across sad advertisements because no one needs to be tricked into empathy/ the animals are okay and no one is an orphan/ there’s a new brand of comedy special because trauma jokes can’t exist without trauma/ everyone gets enough sleep and you can only find eye cream in books or museums next to the faded diet advertisements and political pamphlets/ the clouds play Kendrick Lamar/ no one remembers what the word calories means/ babies grow up thinking mom means love and dad means love and awake means love/ and abandonment sounds like a made up word