Sam Alexandra Rose

Tag: death

  • when I die I want to be a tree

    Listen to this poem on my Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/writersam/when-i-die-i-want-to-be-a-tree

    I have been thinking about death a lot –
    picking out my plot instead of turning away
    and I have decided that I want you to hollow
    out a tree trunk and place me inside. Don’t
    chop it down, leave it growing and upright. Keep
    the top open so that crows can make nests
    in my hair. It is always a mess anyway. Leave me
    there with my arms splayed like branches
    so the local kids tell each other terrible stories
    about the dead scarecrow woman who lives
    in the woods. I wouldn’t want my stories to stop
    after I have lost the power to tell them myself.
    Could you also make sure I am wearing a welcoming
    smile, not a grimace, as even though my face will be
    hidden within my standing grave, I still want to be the
    light relief. And we mustn’t call it a grave. I was never
    that serious, more of a hedonist with tendencies
    towards deceitfulness and an unreasonable amount
    of laughter which I also think must continue. So with
    that in mind, could you record the sound of my
    snorts, my giggles, my guffaws and sometimes
    play them in the forest, in the dark? Set up your old
    boom box among the rocks and put it on repeat. I just
    want to lark about and as the afterlife is still uncertain
    I need my body to do the work. Just set this up
    for me and we can both enjoy the looks of terror
    on people’s faces as they rush by. Maybe when you die
    you can be a tree here, too. I have been thinking
    about life a lot – losing the plot instead of turning
    away and I have decided that I want you to turn me
    into a wildlife reserve, maybe take a knife to my
    stomach where squirrels can burrow when it gets cold
    and insects can borrow my eye sockets to use as their home
    and the stories about the dead scarecrow woman
    who lives in the woods will never stop being told.

  • I visit my uncle

    I visit my uncle
    whose nose has been partly cut away
    to remove some of the skin cancer,
    who can only eat through a feeding
    tube, who has lost all his weight,
    who has developed an infection
    and a bloodied, sore face, whose
    wife feeds him and gives him his
    morphine and antibiotics, who has
    blood in his pee when he goes once
    per day, whose organs are shutting
    down, who, when he asks if it’s
    curtains for him, hears the answer
    yes. And I leave to go back to my
    upgraded hotel room and I eat pizza
    and drink Southern Comfort and
    the next day I go home and kiss my
    boyfriend and go to work and my
    aunt and uncle will carry on for
    the next two weeks or maybe more
    but that will be all, just a few more
    weeks of enjoying this world in that
    hell hole of a body and we all watch and
    listen and know that we will each follow,
    somehow, someday, and we’re all
    already on our way.

  • all I have to offer is questions

  • August

    the earth is bone dry and cracked under the shade
    of the trees, a desert in this full yet so deserted place.
    Three times a year we would come when I was a child,
    with plastic flowers or a wreath at Christmas. I filled
    up the watering can at the tap and watch as mum and
    dad cleared off dead leaves, forced metal plant supports
    into the soil, hoped the rabbits wouldn’t come this time.
    A vision of dad spitting onto a tissue to wipe the bird
    muck off the grey granite. Grandmother visiting once
    and declaring that this is no place for a child to be and
    me silently agreeing as I stood at the sidelines, hands in
    pockets. We scraped our shoes against the pavement
    as we walked to get rid of some of the mud on those
    rainy days. I wondered what they all felt and what that
    was like and I still do, years later, coming by myself,
    a visit partly because everyone else is in Spain and even
    the dead should have visitors on their birthdays, and
    partly because I want to see if I can feel something.
    I don’t. I don’t feel grief and I can’t force myself to
    feel it no matter how long I stand and stare at my
    name and his engraved in the stone, at red and white
    flowers I never would have chosen, at the gold cross
    and the platitudes I hate. I don’t feel but as a by-product
    of that I feel guilty for not feeling and I feel angry that
    I can’t feel and I feel jealous of all the people who do
    feel.
    I have never felt numb and I have always psycho-analysed
    myself and I have always known myself, but to not know
    him, and to not feel for him – I don’t know what to do
    with that so I sit on a bench and enjoy the sunshine and the
    grass and think about how emotional I usually am and how
    much I have grieved for myself but how today of all days
    I can’t shed a single tear for him, not even a drop
    to dampen the cracked, dry earth beneath my feet.

  • Walk in the Park

    I had a dream we were going for a walk in the park
    because that is what he enjoyed doing.
    I don’t know if that is really true.
    He might have hated walking. 

    They wanted me to come on the walk.
    Mother, my niece, my nephews.
    The kids saw it as a nice trip out.
    Everyone easy-going.
    I was not part of any of their experiences,
    caught somewhere between being a
    sibling and a stranger.
    He mattered too much and not enough.
    Here and not.
    Known and not.
    Mine and not. 

    I didn’t want to go on the walk,
    or be with any of them
    so while they got ready
    I stood in the kitchen for ages
    leaning on the countertop,
    eyes glazed over, my blank stares
    making the refrigerator feel uncomfortable.
    Mother just laughed at me and asked
    why I stood there for so long.

  • Only fools and hearses

    I found someone who could probably empathise with the loss of my brother, who would know what it’s like to not remember a family member and not be able to grieve… and they are a fictional character! It’s Rodney from Only Fools and Horses, which my partner has been watching recently. I can definitely relate to this conversation, from S2E5: The Yellow Peril. Rodney and Del are sat by their mother’s grave. I bolded the important bit. If anyone else can relate, let me know. That would be sort of nice.

    (more…)

  • I spoke to a skeleton today