귀신.

Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis?

Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has been irrevocably spoiled for you?

If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness of ravens”?“

Rosanna Warren, from Go Forth: Poems; "Legende of Good Women: I. The Triumph of Death"

my dead name doesn’t feel like such a dead name while i’m standing next to my dad’s corpse.

i don’t feel bad about writing my dead name in my dead dad’s obituary. what does it matter which name my dad used to call me when he can’t call me anything anymore.

in this moment, i don’t give a fuck about what my gender is or isn’t. what people think it is or isn’t.

there are some things that are alive, and i am one of them.

and there are some things that are dead.

— Joy Harjo, from "Running," Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light