Absence vs. Death
Not having a job, I cannot
accept this challenge, I say
aloud to a social media post.
Who is the audience? Me,
or those who disappear from
me, or those with whom I once
felt close who have since left
the living, died, passed on?
Who’s gone? I know that I am.
Who is here? I know that I am.
Listening to the news as I type,
becoming further alienated....
But I’d rather be elated, happy
optimist that I am, right? I re
peat something I frustratingly
fingered into my tiny pocket-
sized internet a few hours
earlier when I was walking
Market Street in search of a
few beverages. I was thirsty,
but was I alone? Were these
creatures littered upon the
sidewalk like me? I was,
in fact, communicating. To
someone. Who was some
where. Something came
back to me which seemed
a response to what I had
almost haphazardly sent
off. These untethered
thoughts cannot integrate.
I’ve experienced disappear
ance. I’ve been disappeared.
I’ve had people, if people we
are (names are also given to
ghosts) permanently remove
themselves from my presence.
And I am reminded too often
that those who have vanished
show up elsewhere, presenting
themselves in ways that I can
see, or mostly believe I see,
can point to this purported
proof that they are probably
somewhere. If I look hard
again it seems with memory
and logic, if these can be
trusted, provide hints that
the life of those permanently
gone from me are loved, that
there is joy, and community.
and that all of this transpires
parallel to whatever might be
happening here. where I am.
With me. Oh, it could all be
an act. Witchcraft. Or it could
be that nothing exists, not even
me; not depression nor anxiety,
no grief or memory or love or
loss, this absence or dearth I
sense on the outside, relative
to what might have been, and
one that hollows out the inside,
that burrows into the soul,
removing its substance.
Imagine that, the digging
out from the inside. Of a soul.
What’s material? What’s ethereal?
Everything? But what am I telling
you, if anything is being told?
Someone, who is here no more
but once probably existed, said it
much better. But before she, no
longer of this world (yet her words
very solidly, materially, and like the
cable I’ve connected to the device
upon which I type, are filled with
electricity, which is something like
life, perhaps, and a force that also
might remove it, should there be
movement, forces, actual words
with which to contend)—before I
give you what I am trying to say,
because perhaps saying anything
is impossible, I’ll say something,
like Come at me! With all that you
have. So that I am compelled to
resist. And in that resistance, to
feel. And with such feeling and
resistance I could come toward
the notion that I am here, and
even, perhaps, glimpse that I’m
not alone. Can you do that for me?
Absence is harder to accept than death.
—Etel Adnan