our still alive list

•  the people I've been able to love,
• and the people I'll one day learn to
• my family
•  I’ve yet to fulfill my best man duties at my older brother’s wedding ceremony
• the lilac haze where the sea ends
• Succession is still on the air and seeing as Arian Moayed and Kieran Culkin fill me with such a joy while Brian Cox delights and terrifies me and Jeremy Strong takes an emotional cheese grater to my heart on a regular basis, not to mention the countless other performances I could write an absolute dissertation on, it would be silly for me not to stick around to keep following where my favourite fictional family goes and one day see all of the cast and crew fill their shelves with well deserved prizes. ( I would also like to be Gerri when I grow up, please and thank you. :) )
  
• I've learned how to become vulnerable around the people I love
• the little boy within who needs healing
• to fight fascism
• conversations with God before I meet him
• I’m still waiting for my first kiss
• my guinea pigs
• As I have so lovingly been reminded by friends at The Stinging Fly, I’m also sticking around so I can keep laughing, writing, and be completely and utterly inspired by people I admire.
  
• the music in the poetry
• spicy food
• there’s still more goodness to see in the land of the living
• the glitz and glam of my first poetry book
• to walk paved trails behind my apartment that lead under the overpasses and down by the river, just to see what's new
• my Animal Crossing island
• watching the wind flit through the leaves as I'm swaddled inside a hammock makes me feel like a baby, ready to be born again
• The Sprout Club gives me a place where my voice is heard
• the people who I impact
• and the world that impacts me 
• the world is still beautiful​
• for the person I love 
• and the spectacle of unearthing 
• Finally, as he’s no longer here to share all my joys and sorrows with me, I have to stay, as I have for the past decade, to make him proud and so that one day I can, as a former colleague of his once said, stand in a place that’s meaningful to me, look up, and say “Dad, I did it.”
  

Alicia Pau Keane