by Raksha Narasimhan
Art by Jennifer Xu
Issue: Metanoia (Winter 2017)
As she lets her eyes drift to a close, she clutches the twirling threads of the bracelet so tightly that her knuckles whiten
The lines defining reality begin to blur, and the foreign ghost of a painfully familiar young girl presses it into her cold hands
mommy, lookit what i made!
i know you really really like light pink but i couldn’t find any so i used white and red
because last week Missus Ortega told me that you can mix white and red to make pink!
isn’t that neat? well anyways,
mommy, i hope you like it, because i made myself a matching one
And even when they were apart, those swirling strands held them together.
mommy, i’m bleeding
mommy, why aren’t you picking up the phone?
mommy, i’m sorry
that i couldn’t remember
how to call the police and doctors and firefighters but
mommy, please pick up the phone
it hurts
mommy
i
love–
As those ebony ringlets cascaded into the icily empty coffin, the white and red threads fluttered down along with her little olive hands, sinking beneath the dark damp soil.
