The impact of grief is sudden. It punctures through routine, leaving nothing.
The memory of a punched-out exhale. Afterward, the sun
rises again. Its shadow yolky—yellow rays dripping down
panes, a mother’s face—and sizzling up. Quick as it ventures through
grief. There, it finds an absence of sound; the urge
to always be saying goodbye, to never be caught off guard by the guilty
lurch. Loss lights a match against striker paper.
Burns a forest fire half-obscured by fog. Between trees’ embracing branches,
embers are relit. Their orange heat sears, the only evidence
of their gluttony the charred stump’s body, raw and crisp in the fire’s
wake. Inside the house, flames laps at walls, licking up bright wallpaper in pigmented bursts. Deep holes burn in the yellow fluff of foam
insulation. In different lighting, their trace could be the crumpled sound
of a city bus slamming into a biker headed home. Inside,
a mother yells for her daughter. Searches for the other sock in her lucky pair. She calls out: where’s the second half of my luck?
Her body seeks the eye of the storm. She stares
at unwashed dishes crowding the sink; falls to the ground as walls peel.
She has one sock clenched in her fist. The other is missing—
if not permanently gone, then burnt beyond recognition.
Kyla Guimaraes is a student and writer from New York City. Her work is published in or forthcoming for The Penn Review, Aster Lit, and Eunoia Review, among others, and has been recognized by the Alliance for Artists & Writers and the Young Poets Network. Kyla edits poetry for Eucalyptus Lit, and, in addition to writing, likes playing basketball and watching the sunrise.