Ephemera Quotes

“I’ll still love you when I am bones, when I am air, when I am made only of stars.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“suffering feels cleaner.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“If I am a remake and this life the afterimage of an afterimage of a soul, new as the first word, tell her I am attempting to free us. Poorly but stubbornly, I am attempting to let go. If not for us, then for the next passenger.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“Isn’t it intoxicating—
the ecstatic briefness of it all?”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“There is camaraderie among
women and death. Both know how to
become a vigil. To be busy and still.
An usher from one room to the next.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“I have loved you even when
I have asked myself not to.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“None of us are going back.
Winter will be served cold
and alone, the way things
lay in museums. Welcome
to our finest exhibit:
the heart gutted,
the lovers who know
no springtime.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“Who named the ground for kneeling? Who first
imagined heaven? Decided to sing upward,
calling on the waiting room of everyone we love.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“I am in awe of this season,
how every room in nature
becomes a funeral.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“I must tell you: every poem is about death
when you are reading to the dying.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“I do not fear change, but I am quieted by it.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“Tell her I am afraid, but I am trying anyway.
Because what more can we ask of ourselves
(now and then) but to race over and over
imperfectly against time, disease, famine,
heartbreak, freak acts of humanity and nature,
only to wake up back at the starting line,
salvaged and full of hope.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“
We are all heavy with outdated versions of ourselves.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera

“I was wrong; my grandmother
isn’t waiting for death. Instead, drifting
in and out of a much softer world. It is
the living who wait. Who count the hours,
the morphine doses, the last requests
for ice chips. With their card games and
their tears and their own hushed regrets
from all the time they had nothing to wait for.”
― Sierra DeMulder, Ephemera