Bloodstream by Sarah Carey

Dear Sarah Carey,

During my adolescence, when I believed I’d choose the stage over the page, I grew fascinated with the hallmarks of a musical. Enduring a musical theater show, you’ll almost experience the big, ensemble numbers, the eleven o’clock numbers, but you’ll almost always hear a character belt out an “I Want” song.

I realize now that most of the work I write, and the majority of the work I read and therefore love, is centered around want.

In “Globus,” from your collection Bloodstream, soon to be published by Mercer University Press early next year, you write the following: 

“… I want to believe

divinity lives—within my body,

out of my hands. Years ago, I passed

the peace of the Lord in a pew.

Now, I toss, I want 

my peace back” (7).

I sometimes feel that I give too much of myself to others — that I’ve overshared, overconsoled, or overstepped. When this happens, I worry that I have given up too much of myself, shared too much of my peace. I have found myself wondering if it is possible to give too much of whatever higher power there might be’s peace, and if I might be able to take a smidgen of it back.

Throughout Bloodstream, you explore grief and nostalgia for humans (those unborn and those present) and pet dogs alike. You write want. Want to have a few more moments with those passing. Want to have experienced motherhood. Want to make it through these wantings unscathed.

You even write, “as was his want” (22), as opposed to “as was his wont” when describing your father’s move from seminary to ministering at a religious school, which I find incredibly interesting. You write that your father’s change from his own learning to ministering is from this desire, rather than his “wont,” or his habits.

There is a tension between desire and habitual behaviors that you explore throughout the collection. We, as individuals and as community members, want those close to us (humans and pets alike) to be alive, healthy, and here. We do not want them to suffer. We do not want them to want. We are filled with want for what might have been, and for what could be. We’re singing our “I Want” songs in everything we do.

Thank you for sharing Bloodstream with us all.

Very sincerely,

Carlin Steere