I always think about that walk I took years ago through a Boston cemetery it was peaceful the headstones were like museum artifacts sprawling is how I describe it when I tell the story I cried on the steps of a mausoleum thinking about how all those people lived entire lives before I showed up to the party carrying boxed Rosé and a container of store-bought hummus when I got to Anne Sexton’s grave the sky suddenly choked open and rain came pouring out back at the hotel I Googled how do astronauts pee in space what happens if there’s a medical emergency on the ISS I wanted to know every distant and mildly uncomfortable fact I shivered to sleep in my soaking-wet clothes with the A.C. on full blast the next day as penance I purchased a copy of Anne Sexton’s Live or Die from a used bookstore I feel that I should include the requisite nouns apparition / catacomb / gravedigger / columbarium / I keep moving so grief won’t catch me I’ve left it behind so many times I’ve buried it under nouns eventually it will run out of breath see how small it looks from here just a little hand the size of a doll’s reaching up from the ground—
–
Sarah Mills’s debut poetry collection is forthcoming in 2027 with Lit Fox Books. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, ONLY POEMS, trampset, Jet Fuel Review, HAD, Up the Staircase, The Shore, Pithead Chapel, Beaver Mag, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. Find her on Bluesky @sarahmillswrites.