This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Ishaan Barrett
I run so fast I am not running. Your home
holed out of graveyards and I turn up the
speaker. It is so hot the piers below are rimmed
with bleed of the flies and it is only so
terrible because you are not here to witness.
You do not have to tell me you understand
how death works. Here I am: above the bridge
where a car slides into the water though
no-one is passenger and I cry into my arms.
Light forming a slender arrow through a window
past this city to incise sight. The beam
underneath my feet cool as the metal belly
of beer cans and my hands so calloused
I believe myself to be Jesus even despite
not knowing the future. Here is my lightness:
sliced in the middle of a clubroom made entirely
of ocean. How feathers fall through the skied ceiling
so fiercely I imagine it your body. Even here I am so
scared of my father’s hand striking my face I forget
he can sometimes be kind. My own half-weight
gliding through a tunnel mouthed of cars and
into a glowing field licked clean of your
absence. How vast and wasteful. Bombs could
snow any minute now and it would be a miracle;
I pour saltwater into my body to keep my grief
alive: see it backlit and boned to my teeth.
Stephanie Fuentes (she/her) is a poet and writer from Boston and New York City. Currently, she is a first-year at Barnard College. She loves cold brew, lyrical essays and memoirs, and the tenth track on Carrie & Lowell.