Sarah Elkins

Poetry

Sarah Elkins lives in southern West Virginia. Her work is forthcoming from or has recently appeared in The Cimarron Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Quarterly West, Hiram Poetry Review, SWWIM, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. Find her at SarahElkins.com

Refusal

Refusal

Shuffling through life honey-tongued, wanting to be understood— How do you say cease in Yiddish? Uncle? I hear the trash truck rumble up the hill, the plane descend, but not the handshake you make with yourself in the moment you decide this is it. I can’t defend the gut trouble, the vertigo, the inability to write a legible note. The autonomy of refusing water is a sort of yes.

“ I wrote ‘Refusal’ quickly after a phone call with a friend who'd recently lost her mother. Although, "lost" isn't the right word. Her mother had been declining in recent years. She—the mother, I mean—was elderly but still had a brilliantly lucid mind and had decided she was done. She'd been suffering from severe vertigo and other health issues. She decided and communicated to her daughter that she would stop eating and drinking. Her daughter stayed with her during the entire process which, I want to say, took more than a week, maybe two. I can't imagine what those days and nights were like. What love. ”

Listen:

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