Sarah Tate

POETRY

Eden Writing Her Own Obituary

_{DEATH ANNOUNCEMENTS AND FUNERAL NOTICES}
_{THE GARDEN OF EDEN} — brutally murdered by words twisted like smoke and buried to rot under sloughs of snakeskins. Do you smell my cries? I wanted to leave something of account: a bard’s song, maybe, some sad rhymes for the poets, a couple words thrown onto a Wikipedia page. My story like an arc for the unborn, you know. Instead, you consider my paradise lost like you would chew on a vague memory. When you hear a myth about an old Greek sailor limping toward a banquet, something pricks you. It’s the same ache when air smells of flame, when you remember how your father spun you in his arms, the sky a swirl of slippery stars. That feeling of something infinite beyond the horizon. I know. My after angers me, too. Misery means absence, every bone scraped clean. How all you ever longed for, all warmth and wonder, is a voice muffled by the wall: half-heard, instantly forgotten, like night songs of crickets and frogs. Low winds, my death rises ghostly like shawls of white mist. You cannot sleep. Moon-water light on the floor, sky like black stone. You stare at the wall, knowing when you close your eyes, your dreams will smell faintly of flowers, my impossible flowers.

All the Night Up There

after three hours of staring at a sky for stars I know won’t be there

1.(first hour)

God, I want to believe you.
That you’re really there squinting through dust,
ready (and willing) to carry bones
down old valley roads like sacks of flour,
having every intention of threading
laughter through them — to make them
children again, all twinkle and gold,
faces pressed against the glass
of the world, not afraid to clutch
at light, even if it burns.

2.(second hour)

The future isn’t what it used to be.
Like Samson, I am, with both hands
trying to scoop honey from carcasses
of hollowed-out dreams. Sometimes
I think you’re a God of riddles rather
than parables. I admit, the candles
of those wise and foolish virgins
throw wide shadows on the walls.
Wait, watch, time moves on, but when
will it end? We all fall asleep, don’t we?

3.(third hour)

I think you’re sad, too, knowing
of murder, truth, how some will never come
home, forever home. Things break apart,
but all the night up there aching to make us see.
You want us to see: leaves fall, gentle, like rain;
mist rises white through trees; wrens skip
in the weeds. It’s late and dark, the only
glow for miles pulses of plane wings
across the clouds. I see now: heartbeats
of light against distance like infinity.

Edge

The world has not yet fallen.

What else does this mean
but gratitude and the cold,
quiet buzz of anticipation?

Even if earth stretches
barren, blood snaking
in dirt, trees standing
as brass instruments,
distant and mute,

I brace my bones
and stick hope
between my teeth
like a blade of grass.

This world is often
no friend of mine
but looking up:
clouds puffed
with lavender
and below:
patches so green,
they’re laughing
at the buried grief
beneath them.

I breathe in
the fact I live.
Another day, then,
to gather wild joys
in the sun.

Sarah Tate is a writer, editor, and teacher from the pine trees of Partlow, Virginia. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in Solum Journal, Ekstasis, The Clayjar Review, Unbroken, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Scapes was recently released by Bottlecap Press (2025).

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Image: “Adam and Eve Driven out of Eden” by Gustave Doré, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons