Revive the Archive: Matthew J. Lau’s “The First Time I Died” (2003)

Revive the Archive is a weekly series that brings new eyes to previously published works. This week we look at “The First Time I Died” by Matthew J. Lau. This piece was originally published in volume 9 of The York Review.

I suppose the first time I died
I was twelve. It was so cold
at the viewing; my brother never cried…
I don’t know what they told
my grandpa that left him tearfully
shuddering beyond all consolation.
I remember God was there for me
in pamphlets, with the affirmation
that death took people to a happy place;
however, I was introduced so bluntly
to finality, I can’t imagine my face
smiled at the loss,
despite that flowing cross.

The second time I died, then,
I was seventeen, just walking
to the store when eight or ten
or thirteen guys came talking
after me — a shove to the ground,
turning just in time to catch
the foot that turned me back around,
the moment painless, hollow; all watch
as I absorb the impact with my face,
my mind swallowed by the silence of stars,
until some man’s yell chased
them away…yet nothing hurt,
bleeding in the voiceless dirt.

I died a third time, twenty now,
my first time on my own; the hot
summer burning with a newness found
in every smile, every glance — and caught
on a new bed, a familiar voice
demanding a new question: more
an order than a choice,
but taken willingly. Unsure
of what to do, I lay pinned, afraid
of pain upon resistance, submissive;
afterwards, in the dark I laid
unmoved, still dying,
unaware of any crynig.

*

I died just two months after that,
walking in on what I really always knew.
My weakness prolonged the aftermath
no matter where I tried to run to.
A car soon after took my life away,
my old, happy illusion still a spark
inside my husk. I remembered to this day
not breathing in the trembling dark,
lying beneath the world above,
fearing footfall — or worse,
the creak of old boards making love:
every crawling second I relived
what I refused to forget or forgive.

I died once more, but unlike how
I died before: this time I suddenly awoke
as from a dream, my world now
real, my past all drawn in smoke
that dissipated at my touch; and all because
when looking into honest eyes I saw
in them the good in me. Who I was
went the way of dreams, and all
my sorrow and malaise defused.
I took my first real breaths
since youth, parts long unused
reanimated, that smile undoing every death.
In this new light, I grow assured
I did not die, having never lived before.