Grief isn’t something that happens in one go, and it isn’t something that stays in its box. I find every funeral I end up at means not just mourning the loss of the person in the casket that day, but continued processing of all the losses I’ve experienced. So it’s no wonder when I had to say goodbye to a character I played that the experience would resonate with other griefs I was carrying. While the poem this is extracted from may have been written for The Woman Who Would Not Be Empress, it’s very much for my mother, too.
The Farthest Star
A girl perches on a fence, looking up at an enormous statue of the Buddha. Echoes of cathedrals and sacred halls define her path to
