After Anne Carson
Family has never been Christmas dinners, small talk with cousins I see during the holidays and at funerals. It has never even been my brother, someone I thought I should look up to because he’s in the army and as a kid, that made him a hero, but as an adult who knows a thing or two about imperialism, that makes him a victim of an exploitative system. My brother and I don’t have anything in common, not even birth parents, but how could I admit that to people who think I’m grieving a blood loss? I know I fainted when I gave blood in college, but this loss is different. I
couldn’t even attend a funeral because he’s not dead, he just refuses to acknowledge my existence. When people ask if we were ever close friends or if we ever even got along just a little, I wish I could talk about happy memories for hours, but the truth is I only have like two memories of him not being an asshole and a dozen memories of him torturing me. The rest are memories of his absence. So no, family isn’t what I was born into or even what I suppose could have been my second attempt at family. Family is what I kept from the ruins of my self-sabotage and the art I’ve created from it.
Sophie Dufresne
Sophie Dufresne studies psychology and creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. They developed a passion for poetry after reading “Hope” by Emily Dickinson in sixth grade. They are an editor at their student newspaper and have been published by Milk Carton Press, Oddball Magazine, Brain Mill Press, _voidspace and JAKE, among other publications. You can find them on Twitter @i_m_sope.
Cosmic Double 