CONTENT WARNING: A note that today’s episode engages with suicide and suicidal ideation.

If you or someone you know needs help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available by dialing the number 988, twenty four hours a day.

Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

One of my MFA instructors found life difficult. I spent an evening with her just two weeks prior to the event of her passing. That shifted something in me, a desire to find it all endlessly breathtaking. I have not always but I remember not wanting to mechanically conduct myself in a hapless fog, instead to see beyond the surface of things. She gave a brilliant reading at Bennington College that last night I saw her. I had recently moved to Vermont — newly married, new job, and new child. I drove down at her request. She was unaware of the 2 ½ hour distance. I heard a new direction in her work; the host of the event noticed as well; he spoke of the courage in her new poems.

With a mutual friend, the other featured reader, the three of us talked politics over beers. We squeezed into the booth of a makeshift bar on campus. The other reader eventually retired to his room. I was happy to have a chance to catch up one on one. But three glasses in, her mood changed. Meanwhile, Steely Dan blasted loudly from a jukebox. A small knot of people flailed playfully in a circle. The spinning disco lights made the mostly empty dance floor even sadder. She confided in me. She leaned in close, spoke in low tones about her difficult winter. Her eyes were drawn; I felt her hurt. I felt her sadness.

Eventually, she changed the topic to my good fortune, a coveted job in a beautiful part of the country. She said the summer brought new opportunities for her. She planned to house sit for friends and write, to live frugally with her young son.

Sitting there, I wished I could get her to see beyond the sources of her pain. She was a talented poet, with a great deal to offer the world. She published two books; one of them received a prestigious prize. But mental illness cannot be wished away. Mental illnesses are diseases that restrict our ability to see fullness and abundance. Shortly after hearing the news of her passing, I mourned, then went into my own silence. I made a conscientious commitment to clarity.

Today’s poem banishes any doubt that this is all a precious journey. It is a poem that points to a holy rite practiced the world over whose aim is purification and renewal.

Third Week of Ramadan
by Sahar Romani

By  then  we were  used  to  it.  Mornings  no longer  found us  in  the 
kitchen,  turning  on  the  kettle.  Breakfast  was  something  people 
did on  billboards  or TV.  We leaned  less on  promises  of after-dark 
samosas,  scoops  of  ice cream.  Our hunger  turned quiet,  orderly. 
As if we knew what hunger was  and what it was never supposed to 
be.  A  dull  cold  squeezed  our  ankles,  burned  in  our  ears.  Nights 
stunted, we stole sleep on bus seats, in front of computer screens. 
Hands  moved  off  beat.   Weekends,    we  lay  in  bed  under  cream 
cotton  sheets  past  edges  of  noon.  But  we  didn’t  want  days  to 
dissolve  unconsciously.  We  wanted  to  stand  in  our  faint bodies, 
upright.  Awake.  Watch the city hurry past our shoulders.  We were 
too weak to keep up. Sometimes this allowed us to see. 

“Third Week of Ramadan” by Sahar Romani from THE OPENING © 2024 Sahar Romani, published by the Poetry Society of America. Used by permission of the poet.