“This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.”

The Poem
A Gate - Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

The Beverage

Blue Gatorade

What is the flavor of blue Gatorade? I could not tell you. The flavor is the color blue, just like grape-flavored things are not actually anything like a grape, but rather the color purple. One time, also, someone told me the reason banana-flavoring tastes like it does (awful) is because it is actually close to how bananas tasted before factory farming or genetic modification or something. Just how they tasted before this, whatever this is, here at what feels like the end of history. I don’t know if that’s true at all. I never followed up on research and honestly forgot until I was typing this email.

But I digress. Blue Gatorade was my saving grace today somewhere on the side of Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah. It was so blue and full of electrolytes for my poor, confused body. Why are we wedging ourself into rock crevasses and then pulling ourself up by our arms and scrambling over wet, slick stone? This is a bad choice! My body was yelling. But I calmed us with blue Gatorade, and we made it.