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The Day I Heard
Rebecca Watkins The day I heard we reached sixty thousand deaths, I noticed the slumbering rosebush in the yard had become a tumbleweed of thorns, brittle sticks and blackened buds, where life had trickled out. With my pruners in hand, I separated branches, thrust my body forward welcoming the sting of the thorns on skin through my shirtsleeves, pinpricks through my gloves, a drum roll of small fires snagging my skin as I dove in. I snipped and lopped until a bare wobbly outline stood, a house without curtains unlocking the sky. Later in the tub, my cuts stinging under warm water. I ran my finger over the puncture, the shape of a checkmark or a wing on the soft part of my belly. I thought about a girl I knew who cut herself—those tightropes of scars on her arms and legs– a banner, a release because sometimes crying isn’t enough and pain is proof, however temporary, that she still stood. I felt no need to offer an apology, I knew the roses would return by July, brash pink shouts of summer when our grief is tenfold. |
From the series Abandoned, by Elizabeth Jaeger
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