Wikipedia estimates that over 106 billion total human beings
have ever lived. There are over 7 billion people in the world,
right now, in this very second. But I always wondered
if the dead outnumbered the living.
Once the artist Spencer Finch created a wax installation of 366 candles
to commemorate the year 1862, when Emily Dickinson
wrote 366 poems in 365 days.
Each color of candle symbolizes a color in one of those poems;
the poems that did not contain colors
match with a candle made of natural paraffin.
Each candle takes 24 hours to burn down.
I attempted to do the same thing once, only with paint
instead of candles. I tried to paint my soul,
even made my boyfriend purchase an easel for me,
but when I put brush to canvas,
all that came out was white goop.
But let me ask you this: if the dead outnumber the living,
if the dead outnumber the living,
whose bodies are we walking over
at this very moment in time?
Absence never makes the heart grow fonder.
No, it simply makes the owner
desire to have open-heart surgery.