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The Fate of Bodies as Explained by JoAnne, Age 4

Katie Kehoe

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My teacher. She told. She told me about atoms. They’re smaller than this dinosaur. This marble. I lost my marble when my mom took it. She took it and she said that it was dangerous. I once put the dinosaur in my mouth. You. You can’t have the dinosaur. That’s my sister’s dinosaur. She died. She was exploded. Hey, could you ask my mom if I could get my marble? I want my marble. Maybe, you could have my goldfish? I feed my turtle goldfish. My turtle, she’s so big. Look! My sister’s turtle. I got all her toys, but she was alive then. She grew out of them. She was bigger, like really big. My sister, she used to pick me up. She threw me high in the air. But she caught me. Will you catch me? My mom says I’m too big, I’m too big to be caught, but I still want to play. We used to eat string cheese. I’d go chomp like a dinosaur and string cheese would disappear. Cause I ate it. She used to babysit me, my sister. Then she exploded. And her atoms, they went everywhere. We were sad for a long time. My mom is still sad. Then my teacher. She tells me she’s stardust. That my sister is stars. Like we’re all going to be stars someday because that’s, that’s, where atoms come from.

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Katie Kehoe studies library science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, The Appalachian Journal, and The Indianapolis Review. She was a finalist in the NC State Poetry Contest (2019), and winner of the Truman Capote poetry prize and the John Foster West poetry prize.

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