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# Dying Is Linear
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/dying-is-linear/
- Published: 2026-08-07T12:06:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T17:22:04.000Z
- Description: Alice George
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> when she says *your mother should buy you an Easter dress*

> I know that in some silent moment she forgot her daughter

> her eyes were green in every shade I can’t remember one

> 

> who told you the truth about the final weeks—never dying less

> always traveling toward the inevitable however long cannot be hopeful

> without being something else

> 

> you need only see drowning above water once to know its name

> you can only say goodbye once having said it over and over

> 

> her eyes became fisheyes floating in algae and foam

> until they closed for a week before the breath that breaks

> 

> is it the everlasting dream the clock moving only minutes

> that time before death an eternity my daughter and I the passengers

> black dome of sky without stars if this goes on forever

> if this is heaven

> if this is all there is and death is a straight line drawn across a map

> then the only way we can get there is flying

### Alice George earned a degree in English literature and spent seventeen years in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2023, she resigned to care for her mother, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She now works as a teacher’s aide.