Spoiler
A poem that begins with a diagnosis of fear and ends as an instruction for living: whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.
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Recording: The New Yorker
Can you diagnose fear? The red tree blooming from uterus to throat. It’s one long nerve, the doctor says. There’s a reason breathing helps, the muscles slackening like a dead marriage. Mine are simple things. Food poisoning in Paris. Hospital lobbies. My husband laughing in another room. (The door closed.)
(excerpt)
About this poem
“Spoiler” was first published in The New Yorker in September 2020. Alyan — a clinical psychologist as well as a poet — moves from the consulting room to the oldest subjects: how we inherit our ways of speaking about dying (“This is how my mother / and I speak of dying—the thing you turn away by letting in”), and what it means to keep building a life you know the tide will take.
The poem later became the closing piece of her fifth collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (Ecco, 2024).