I never feel so alive as when I am writing and have no right
answer for what this means
for the lives of others, how
to live in the after which after all means the now of our living
together when together means death for allthose forbidden from
entering the home so
methodically built until afterthey are dead. Only after will locked doors swing amply open to admit the murdered into rooms of vastcrushed comfort, whose inhabitants eat and sleepon furnishings carvedwith corpses, steppingwith hospitable sorrowaround the bodies of thedead, speaking dirgesinto the phantomdarkness. What happensin the quiet grave where the living make themselvesat home, where noisily they intend to thrive, wherethe poem itself concedes to suffering so it might persistin blazing against it.
Copyright © 2025 by Youna Kwak. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 5, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets
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