In a first-person reflection, Orkideh meditates on her first death—the one she missed when Leila died on the plane in her place. She was left only with grief and inertia, denied any clarity or reward. This time, she insists, she wants to be present for her own dying, which is the conceptual core of her final installation, Death-Speak.

She quotes Forough Farrokhzad's lines about falling into bedlam and being sad tonight, finding in them a stark, urgent simplicity she aspires to. Orkideh argues that art-as-ornament is a recent, decadent invention; originally art was a way of storing knowledge and feeling in one another. Her dying body—tubes, oozing fluids—exceeds language and paint, so the work must simply say it plain: she is here, she is dying.

Orkideh recounts pitching the installation to Sang, her former lover and longtime gallerist. Sang, stung that Orkideh had hidden her diagnosis, dismissed the idea sarcastically, comparing it to Marina Abramović. Orkideh told her she would do the piece with or without her, at the Met or a folding chair in Union Station.

She reflects on their relationship: Sang had truly loved her, and Orkideh had loved being loved that way, even though she could not return it in kind. They had drifted into friendship, with Sang remarried and raising children, while remaining her gallerist. After arguing, Sang relented and even named the piece Death-Speak. Her final, halting plea—that not everything has to stand in for everything else, that Orkideh doesn't have to do this—was met only with Orkideh's quiet, repeated, "I know."