The following is an excerpt from indigo by Jonathan Foster. It’s a featured Speakeasy selection, and there are still limited review copies available for qualified reviewers.
shocking
to lose something
so important
i mean, this wasn’t like
the remote or
keys or
even a
famous painting
this was something actually priceless
how could this
happen?
how could someone
so full of life
lose their kid?
how could a kid
so full of life
be gone?
couldn’t wrap
my mind
around
her departure
in the dead of winter
age 20
threshold of adulthood
threshold of next
not unlike a spring season
for her
so she died
full of life and spring
in the dead of winter?
what the…?
she had so much life to live
wait… what was the point?
we had been getting her to
adulthood
showing her how
leading the way
shoe-tying
piano-playing
stick-shift driving
a thousand things
we did it
she observed
then followed
that’s the way this works
kids follow parents
but then she died
and the sequence
was wrecked
hurt so bad
messed up eating
messed up sleeping
messed up eliminating waste
messed up routine
messed up directions to post office
messed up everything
i’d be talking
and words would start acting
like little tripwires
connected to
little memories
connected to
little detonations
of sadness
just normal conversations
dentist or
barber or
grocery store
have any kids?
sons?
daughters?
how many kids do you have?
next thing i knew
i was slipping behind closed doors
trying not to make a scene
in public space
dentist or
barber or
grocery store
yeah, just trying to find
secluded place to
make room for
little detonations
of sadness
Praise for Indigo
“I love, love, love this book.”
—Paul Young, The Shack
“Foster’s slender volume is an understated masterpiece that draws the reader into it with a force like gravity and delivers a whole series of profound reflections that pass over one’s consciousness like the radiating rings of a stone thrown into a still and silent pond.”
—Richard Boothby, Blown Away: Refinding Life after My Son’s Suicide
“This text ranks with C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed in its description of grief …”
—Bruce Epperly, The Elephant is Running: Process and Open and Relational Theologies
“This book is absolutely stunning. Jonathan has written on grief in a way that only someone interacting with it can—someone who has wrestled with it, been smothered by it, and has (in some strangely beautiful way) befriended it.”
—Glenn Seipert, Emerging from the Rubble
About the Author
Jonathan Foster is the author of several books, including Questions About Sexuality that Got Me Uninvited from My Denomination, The Reconstructionist: People>Text, Mercy>Sacrifice, Love>Fear, and Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe. He’s the partner of one, and the father of three, who’s won some writing awards, reached #1 in multiple Amazon categories, has some degrees from NorthWind Seminary, podcasts, but mostly likes to hike.
Very beautiful and gut punching poem thank you Mike and of course deep affirmation for Jonathan