Evan Nolasco
A sharp voice pierces my ears,
The figure doesn’t seem to understand my fears.
Mind desolate as a desert
the key attributes of an introvert.
Staring at the blindness ahead, my paper with no lead.
The question that occurred
“what is your biggest fear”
So I wrote something small “a spider,”
sitting there pretending,
pretending to be a little writer afraid of nothing at all.
I couldn’t say the real answer
some fears don’t fit on lined paper.
Some fears live in the chest,
some fears burn under skin,
My fears already swallowed me.
In the cardinal’s glow
I see how burnable a life can be,
how quick the flame, how brief the plea.
My hands reach, they burn,
reaching for the ember,
not knowing what to remember,
not knowing what to forget
the memory of you lifting me onto your lap,
or the tangled rope of your words that used to snap.
The flames rise, they climb,
and I cannot climb out.
My tears carve their own paths,
my grief burns sharper than the words I speak.
Then I see it.
A red cardinal in your chair
your chair, still shaped like you,
your cushion, still dented where you always sat.
It perches quietly, stubbornly,
like it knows the space you left in me,
like it’s trying to sit in the outline of your ghost,
trying to fill a void so wide it echoes.
And for a moment God, for a moment
I almost reach out,
thinking if I touch its feathers
I might bring you back,
I might hear your laugh,
I might feel your arms,
But even the brightest red cannot wake the souls that rest in the dead.
300 words
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