UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology APRIL 2023 - Flipbook - Page 21
In the Event of My Death
What used to be
a rope descending
my vertebrae to the basement of my spine
grows thin.
In solidarity with my first chemotherapy our cat leaves her whiskers on
the hardwood floor.
I gather them, each purewhite parenthesis, and plant them
in the throat of the earth.
In quarantine
I learned to trim your barbarian
hair. Now it stands always on end:
a salute to my superior barbary skills. In the event of my death, promise you will find my heavy braid and bury it—
I will need a rope
to let me down into the earth. I’ve hidden others strategically around the globe, a net to catch
my body in its weaving.
-Katie Farris
Katie Farris
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive: A Memoir in Poems, Alice James Books, April 2023
Originally published in The Nation, November 2020
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