sammie i like it now thats what i call music

What connections do you draw between mirrors and siblings? Throughout The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs, sisters Miriam and Essie are depicted as reflections of one another. That’s where House began nine years ago, but over time it has transformed into another creature entirely. An X-ray could never convey what we would lose in my father, but perhaps, through specificity and fantasy, I could get to the heart of the future we’d miss out on together, the alternate worlds we could choose for ourselves instead. I realized then that our narrative wasn’t contained within the X-ray. As you might imagine, the piece was flat and detached. So I wrote a very literal poem describing the science behind “crack lung” and the historical and cultural roots of the drug. How it felt to sit across from my father and know he was going to die, hold the proof of his death in my hands, and recognize that there was nothing I could do to prevent it. My father’s sickness had grown something new inside.Ī few weeks later, I arrived at school for my final year of college and couldn’t stop thinking about that image. Clearly visible were a series of branches, like the buds of a cherry tree obscured by morning fog. The free clinic had given him a copy of his X-ray, and he laid it cavalierly on the table between us. I know this because ten years ago I met my father for coffee after his first doctor’s appointment in over a decade.

SD: Crack cocaine causes pulmonary alveolar and interstitial edema, which appears in X-rays as a tree or a blossoming flower. HM: What inspired the narrative in The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs?

Sammie i like it now thats what i call music