by LAUREN RANDOLPH

There are Xs where your eyes should be—skin turned
a gray kind of blue. I can’t shake the thought. Mouth open,
on the ground, a faceless someone breathing life
through your lips. I put words on your tongue;
they shoot anger down my spine. They burn,
sound like a plea, or a bargain, depending on the minute.

I wonder if you cried. I wonder what you saw—
who you were with—if you felt alone. I hope you
saw flashes, the good kind; hope you slipped
into your most treasured memory and let it carry you
on to the next stop. I hope we shared a moment in the field
yesterday—you as a deer, nearing, me as a shell of my hurt.

I like to think you were the nearest one, straight ahead,
fifteen feet far, five minutes of shared staring, your front leg
rising and falling—reading my grief, my awe, my level of threat.
You and the others ran—spooked by the sound of tires. I looked
to the sky for answers, found that same gray kind of blue.
Three deer, three deaths in three months—I steady myself

for another. I study the signs—hesitation in others, unraveling
in myself. I am flesh, bone, and nerve. You still are, too—
both of us in boxes, yours more padded than mine.
You will be carried, lowered, tucked into the Earth,
spirit maybe headed toward some new start or end.
I carry questions, a god-sized Hole, no comfort in believing

there’s a better place. At best, it’s somewhere different,
some place I’ve wanted to visit, some place I often still do.
The force that holds the cards must pull from them blindly,
must not carve prayers into stone, must ignore the raised hands
of those of us who beg to be next—with chests that still rise,
cheeks that still blush, eyes that are stained

wet with wanting. I wring the red from my hands—resentful.
I can’t take your place, take your pain, give you my pulse,
give you the hug I wanted to give you the last night we spoke.
Your passing was no surprise. The raw and rapid grief was,
and still is. You were a sister, we argued, I showed you
a hard kind of love, and you took it—held it in your hands,

shaped it into a candle—put it in your pocket, left it unlit.
I tried to hand you a flame, could have tried harder,
but my hands were hurting, too. I wrapped my wounds
in cacti, in quail, in dirt—in words and tools
you never got the chance to learn. Only you
could wrap yours—hold space for them to heal.

In time, the wild forces of air would not have stung
so badly, would simply have rushed past your scars,
then onto the next in its great rotation. I am healing
without you, leaning toward forgiveness, letting
grief in through my widest window, learning
minute by minute I can only control the wind so much.

Ω

Lauren Randolph is an emerging writer from Aiken, South Carolina. Previously published in The Southwestern Review and Silver Needle Press, she explores addiction and other dis-eases of the mind through candid exploration of both lived and witnessed experience. Her active recovery highlights three primary birthrights with which all are endowed: to honor the Earth and its Earthlings, to greet sorrow with a wink, and to trace forgiveness in the settled debris of loss over time.

Ivana Inés Tovilla-Bátiz is a Mexican-Canadian artist who is a recent fourth-year graduate from Ontario College of Art & Design University. Ivana spent the summer of 2019 in NYC taking part in the Parsons Summer Intensive Program for Illustration at the New School. She was granted immediate entry into the Drawing and Painting program at OCAD University, receiving the Mercedes-Benz Financial Services scholarship, completing an Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design exchange to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and graduating with Honors and Distinction.