BIG AND SMALL DEATH

Collage by Guadu.

I wake up and try to calculate how many days
I’ve been dead for.
It’s a beautiful day there’s a breeze
I feed the cat chicken while

thinking about all the other dead people in the house
how I was dead to them how
they were dead to me.
I think about the pine trees

alive forever always
I think about the other trees the ones
in front of the tall kitchen window
how they change color how

I hate them for it.
We celebrate the big death in our own ways
color food gathering.

I think about how when the father dies
we name the kid after the father
F asks me Why?
I don’t know friend. Here

we tell the baby: I’m putting all of my dad
into you. I’m setting myself up for disappointment. Here
have my father’s name or even mine
I am expecting so much from this life of yours.

You name your kid Light or Kind or Longing
and then you don’t understand why they’re not
any of those things you wished for—

I do not have courage to blow balloons
because I know how that ends. not
aliveforeveralways death

doesn’t make us any more (or any less) divine so I’m
probably going to trash talk my dead ancestors and
then quickly, quietly apologise to them as they watch
me put my nail clippings
in the toilet, flush, and call it a burial
because it returns to the ground. ◆

---

Nayyira is an Egyptian writer, economics and management student, and cat mom. She’s been performing her spoken poetry since 2017, and producing her podcast, Growing Pains, where she talks about everything from emotional and creative wellbeing to random monologues that she later moulds into essays, since 2020. Right now, she’s mainly discussing topics around family, womanhood and growing up, love and loss, and nature. She’s on Twitter and Instagram.