"Funerals are for the living" and "I drink wine sometimes" by Charlotte Nip
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Illustration by Allison Eng
Funerals are for the living
On Ricki’s last night, I asked
God in the form of a Google search
“how does throat cancer kill you?”
Did you know, about 1,119,000 results show
that throat cancer doesn’t kill—
it begins with ordinary symptoms:
stooped shoulders, dahlia lips
dry winter air that suddenly tastes
like the blood of dragons.
Squamous cells live in her wilting breath—
it doesn’t hurt; Ricki whispers,
just a dull ache.
To a group of dying women
in the heart of St. James Cathedral
funerals are for the living. They sit
with damp eyebrows facing
my godmother Ricki, her flat face.
Ricki had stage-4 throat cancer. We all knew
when it came back the second time
it wouldn’t come back a third—
leaking down her tonsils
through her spongey lungs
taking refuge in her liver
and staying.
Eulogy ends.
I eat my godmother’s ashes
to feel a part of her
grow inside me like wild
ivy, poison left sitting out
in April rain.
I drink wine sometimes
Blackout poetry inspired by Jenny Xie’s ‘Letters to Du Fu’
Charlotte Nip is a SFU Master of Publishing graduate and lifestyle marketing assistant at Penguin Random House Canada. She is a diligent social media enthusiast, writer, and poet, who has frequently published on ThoughtCatalog, Spoon University, and Ricepaper Magazine. When she is not working, she likes taking the perfect Instagram shot and going through Vancouver to find it. Follow her on Instagram for her daily adventures (@charlottenip).
