ALT Elegy for Brianna Ghey Sister, you are smiling when I meet you, half a bar of budget chocolate held between your thumb and middle finger, resting on the knuckle of your index, so I think at first you’re serving to the camera all the fuck off power of your grin. But no: the eager sun is only melting a drip of sugar down your wrist. The grass looks freshly watered. Your brows look freshly plucked. Sister, we were meant to meet in a pit of punks, girls to the front. Or meant to march on Parliament together, our longing lifted by ten thousand hoarse and hopeful voices. Or a silver dress that I outgrew was meant to settle on your shoulders. Or we were never meant to meet, but stay safe in distant sisterhood. Sister, it’s already morning and the dogs of news are howling at the gate before your blood has sunk into the earth. The fife and drum. The column’s inch. The typing has begun.
ALT My sister, when I call to pass the dead weight from my heart to hers, says, “The worst is hoping to hear that it wasn’t—” But when my sisters walk with ghosts on either side, what odds does it make: chance or choice, the edge of hatred finds its mark. Sister, you were born after I first ringed my eyes with black, after I first hit the street and tasted desperation, after womanhood began to ring her furious alarms beyond my reach. I wrote a bloody book before you took a breath. The space you left cannot be filled, though we, your weeping sisters, could drown the moon with our grief. Am I no different from the coursers ripping at your years?
ALT I turn to words to turn your loss to less than unspeakable. I too have my devices. Sister, you are far from the first sister I’ve had to find a way to grieve—familiar sorrows sing familiar staves—and you deserve far better than the anaesthesia binding my limbs, than vigils, than editing. Sister, I am sorry. Sister, the power you taught yourself to make yourself anew could level kingdoms, but all I wish for you is life. Sister, this is my small flame. Sister, I will always carry your name.
ALT If you want the library to stay open, you need to wear a face-covering unless exempt. If you forget yours, ask us for a spare.
