Right Story, Wrong Story: How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell

by Tyson Yunkaporta

My sister was murdered recently. I can’t share the details for legal and cultural reasons, so that’s all I’ll say about that, beyond flagging it as an explanation of the barely restrained wrath that bubbles like boiling mud throughout my yarns with Katherine. Besides, I have deadlines and too many dependents who won’t be able to eat or be sheltered if I stop working, so I continue to research and write, instead of attending to this grief that will turn me to stone in the end, if I don’t leave this place and deal with it soon. So I work and wait for the police investigation to end and the funeral to begin, which will be the last of my leave used up for the year, for grief. No margaritas on a beach for me. My holidays are always death wails and shovels and dirt. Year by year, I keep the grief and fatigue at bay by swallowing blobs of rage like amphetamines.