Was tipped to a new poet that I’m looking forward to reading a whole lot more from, Nicole Sealey (@Nic_Sealey).
Here’s something to think about…
The First Person Who Will Live to Be One Hundred and Fifty Years Old Has Already Been Born [For Petra] Scientists say the average human life gets three months longer every year. By this math, death will be optional. Like a tie or dessert or suffering. My mother asks whether I’d want to live forever. “I’d get bored,” I tell her. “But,” she says, “there’s so much to do,” meaning she believes there’s much she hasn’t done. Thirty years ago she was the age I am now but, unlike me, too industrious to think about birds disappeared by rain. If only we had more time or enough money to be kept on ice until such a time science could bring us back. Of late my mother has begun to think life short-lived. I’m too young to convince her otherwise. The one and only occasion I was in the same room as the Mona Lisa, it was encased in glass behind what I imagine were velvet ropes. There’s far less between ourselves and oblivion—skin that often defeats its very purpose. Or maybe its purpose isn’t protection at all, but rather to provide a place, similar to a doctor’s waiting room, in which to sit until our names are called. Hold your questions until the end. Mother, measure my wide-open arms— we still have this much time to kill. [Source]