You Are Not Your Death

Sarah Dickenson Snyder


I wish someone had said when I dived
into that well of fear. Where were those
Buddhist monks when I didn’t use the blue sink
in the upstairs bathroom for years after
a thermometer shattered and left numberless
glass slivers and tiny balls of mercury—Death,
a clinging partner, making me walk downstairs
to brush my teeth & stay up all night sometimes
alone with the darkness.


Sarah Dickenson Snyder’s collections include The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (2023). She’s had Best of Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work is in RattleLily Poetry Review, and RHINO. See more.

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