The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays

by Megan Stielstra

You are supposed to be here. You are needed. We need you. We’re imagining the world. What if you’re the one who saves us? The one who finds the cure? Deactivates the bomb or gets us to Mars or unites us as one? You’re an Ultimate Fighter. You’re Ronda Rousey and Judit Polgár and your genius is off the charts. You design the tech to protect us from bullshit and the drugs for pediatric cancer and a moon-size magnet that sucks metal into space. You play Symphony no. 9 in D Minor and we remember the beauty in the world. You read aloud from “The Girl in the Cabinet” by Melissa Chadburn: “There is a child somewhere — a girl — and maybe she will pick up a book or peruse the internet and she will find your words. And in your words she will discover a world of the possible and she will climb out of the cabinet and she will put down the razor.” You read us poetry, like this from Joy Harjo: “But come here, fear/ I am alive and you are so afraid/ of dying.”