You were always waiting for that piece, that final slice of inspiration that would finish the story you claimed would change the world. But the inspiration never came, and your story sat in your notebook, unattended, like a corpse in a coffin.
In learning the history of the “afterlives” of public women, I have come to fear my own death. I fear the manipulation of my corpse as a means to end Womanhood. I fear that people will champion their desires and use my body to achieve them after my death, and fear that they do it now, while I am still breathing.
As I write this, there’s a gas shortage in North Carolina. Maybe you’ve heard about it. A pipeline hack led to panic buying and hoarding. Tonight, someone tweeted that 78% of gas stations in North Carolina are out of gas, the worst of any state right now.
The ambient fear of my grandmother’s inevitable death hung over me like deep summer humidity. I knew from a young age how precious our time together was, how fraught the timeline, how scarce the memories would someday be. And all these years later, I still grasp at silhouettes of that summer and they slip through my fingers like rain.
Whenever students get too close to me, I flinch. We leave the doors open for airflow because of COVID and I think of my training for active shooters, but you notice there’s no such thing as an inactive shooter?
I thought if I could just pull up these weeds my garden would be perfect. My garden is a patio courtyard, a circle of tiles holding a glass-top table, framed with a square of flagstones, and between the cracks there are ants, woodlice, the occasional worm, and weeds.