Who the fuck is going to catsit while we holiday next year in Spain? The airbnb is nonrefundable. This is how I enter the stage of grief called anger. I can excuse the despair on your youngest child’s face, the terrible maths that had you overdosing a month before your grandchild was due. I can’t, however, accept you abandoning a commitment you made to be alive in six months. That would mean we really did just bury you and then write a birth plan. That we really must add your photo to our altar of the dead and try to find someone who will love our unloveable cat as much as you.
Carson Wolfe (they/them) is a Mancunian poet. They recently won the Debut Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry, and their work has appeared in Rattle, Fourteen Poems, The Penn Review, and Poetry by Chance (Button 2023) amongst others. Carson lives in Manchester with their wife and three children. You can find them at www.carsonwolfe.co.uk.