Molly Brodak, #8
The Florida Horses
Mini Center
5'6"

There’s nothing after death, and I will see you there.

What first catches the eye is how beautifully resplendent
she appears in her bio pic. The future, from all points of the

compass, glimmering, an ephemeral, euphoric bliss, like
gospel in congress with a bluesman’s electrified cottonfield holla’.

So embossed upon this radiant wilderness. A child’s
footprint in the mud, exuviating into more mud. The warps

and wefts in which we are all entwined—hardwired. Living
as an escape from the past

woven into every moment, as we are braided into
each present now we inhabit. Death is pretty clean, a clicking

shut; it is life rot belongs to; it is survivors who see and smell
the decay—this is living.

The smell of rotten roses, like the grief that every condolence
speaks around, and clean, cracked shards of eggshell, like

time expired, but ever present. The dead come back not for you,
but for themselves, to hear their own stories for the first time.

And the sky opened cerulean all the way. In the morning,
before anything bad had happened, before the news came . . .

My partner Molly Brodak passed away yesterday. I don’t
know how else to tell it.

Note: The title and italicized sentences are from the elegiac essay, “Remembering Molly Brodak,” by Gina Myers and from the poem, “Post,” by Molly Brodak.