1. How do you want to die?
  2. Would you like it to be by poison?
  3. Sudden or drawn-out?
  4. Underexposed in the night or overexposed in the sun?
  5. By someone you know or a stranger?
  6. As men around you chant “witch”?
  7. By using a neoliberal newspaper as kindling or…?
  8. Why am I asking you?
  9. Who has say in their own death?
  10. Isn’t that why we joke about cats eating our faces?
  11. Am I making sense?
  12. Do you think bees find their own buzzing calming?
  13. How would you feel about dying mid-flight like a bee?
  14. Will you be around to experience your death?
  15. Would you feel your tiny bee body hit the ground?
  16. What is your most terrible memory?
  17. Did I say something wrong?
  18. What does the snap of a dandelion stem sound like to you?
  19. Do you have a fetish?
  20. Are you sure you want to answer?
  21. Is this too soon?
  22. How do acorn trees mourn the offspring that don’t become trees?
  23. Do you like when people say allergies are an effect of “tree horniness”?
  24. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
  25. Am I talking about death again?
  26. Where are the softest parts of your body?
  27. Do you find yourself touching them?
  28. Do you say anything to them late at night in the dark?
  29. Where do you feel safe?
  30. Has the feeling of tree bark ever recalled some other life?
  31. Have you welcomed love in, when it presented its terrifying silhouette to you?
  32. Have you ever told a lie so strong to yourself, you still think it’s true?
  33. Is this why Alain Badiou calls love a “truth procedure”?
  34. What?
  35. Why?
  36. Is this about coming to the truth or groping around for an end that never, strictly speaking, arrives?

 

 

Marnie Ritchie is a writer and professor of rhetoric. She has an MA from Syracuse University and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, both in Communication. Her poetry has been published in FIVE:2:ONE’s #thesideshow and Juked Magazine. She lives in Tacoma, WA. You can find her on Twitter @marnieritchie.

 

Image: Collage by Joan Pope