I began this poem after the suicide of an acquaintance but abandoned it when every approach felt too sentimental or too dark. When two other people, not as distant this time, took their lives, I returned to the poem. Inspired by Ocean Vuong’s work, I found a loose structure and the courage to meander through my aliveness, writing more personally than I usually do.
Author of the chapbook At Each Moment, Air (YellowJacket Press), Aliesa Zoecklein has also published poems in About Place, Entropy, Seventh Wave, and elsewhere. She taught writing at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida for twenty-five years. She lives with her wife in Gainesville where she writes, gardens, and studies Spanish.
