A World Out of Reach by Meghan O'Rourke

Author:Meghan O'Rourke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Prelude

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

I

My grandmother saw it coming and left.

I’d already left. It came late and swift

Like a tidal wave mistaken for a wave,

Came, not as a note but as an octave,

Black-keyed and mangled, searching the hospice

Only to find she’d left without notice,

The soul clapped from her body, masked by death,

Death hiding death from death and, finding no

Sign of her in the high cheekbones or skin,

Strode out on a cough into the evening.

II

In the weeks between her death and being

Laid to rest, life became COVID-19.

Both the living and the dead shared one air.

Then the service came, and I was not there.

I watched from the safe distance of an app

As my mother and uncle, masked among

The masked few in a pewless space, made peace

With the orphans who’d come to take their place.

Looking at them on-screen was like looking

Out at the world through the bars of a cage.

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