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      July 23, 2017Every Musician’s Suicide Makes Me ThinkJulia Kolchinsky Dasbach

      of the first time you told me goodbye
      over landlines when we were such children
      and the morning seemed years away
       
      how you warned me you wouldn’t last
      the night and the promise
      of my body                         wasn’t enough
       
      to keep you but the next day
      we made love on the floor
      and I told you how hard it was
       
      to know your body—        a sinking boat         a run-over deer’s ribcage
          warm         and expanding
          slower with each step         thick bass strings
          roped         into silent nooses
          a small boy’s voice         set to man’s music—
       
      you told me it was easy
      to want         nothing
      and feel it
       
      told me this after you came
      and I didn’t believe you
      trusted an ocean
       
      of dead fish
      was still an ocean
      trusted such a mouth
       
      must want for me to swim
      inside         but desire
      for another body
       
      doesn’t mean love
      for your own         and if your desire
      were that ocean
       
      it’d be one of mouths         gasping.

      from Poets Respond

      Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

      “On the day Chris Cornell died, my first thought went to my husband, a huge fan and incredibly talented musician himself, who also struggles with depression. A man who holds a deep admiration for other artists and life, while often being overwhelmed by thoughts of the opposite. Hearing of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington’s death, and that his body was found on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday, and then reading about their friendship and the open letter Bennington wrote in response to his friend’s suicide, I was again taken to the musician I fell in love with and married. I felt at once grateful to still have him and scared at the prospect of this being temporary and fragile, living every day on the cusp of loss. I wrote this poem as a way of figuring out my own feelings about loving someone who fights this heavy darkness, a poem about being there to see the fight and feeling powerless to help.”

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