And this is the gift I’m giving to myself now: to not be there. To not bear witness to his eventual death. To not console him, or be with those who would console him: my other brothers and sister, my nieces and nephews, my grandnephews. To not pray that our thousandfold gods, large and small, protect him and keep him here; to not send him off with goodwill into the path of our bygones; to not ask our ancestors to bless him, and carry him, and look upon him kindly. To refuse, in this knife-shining instance, to offer any form of succor, comfort, or indeed, love. To know that—unlike Antigone,
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