By Ruby Davis

Trigger Warning: Mentions of death

Most days,
I wonder how many people
in eight billion I could really
fall in love with. When I was little and
didn’t believe in nightmares or the dark,
I’d ask everybody on the street
what their name was.

And I think I fell in
love with every single one of them
just a little and that makes me think
I could fall in love with anybody if I just
let myself out of my ribcage once in a while.
Other times I think I can’t fall in love with
anybody and the illumination between
interlocked fingers is a ritual meant for
anyone but me.

Oh, hail me,
sweet daughter of Envy.
My heart chartreuse and
my head knotted like a noose.
I have to remind myself nobody
knows a thing about the lovers
in Pompeii. Maybe they were in love,
maybe friends, maybe family, or two
strangers sharing nothing but an embrace
as annihilation reared its ugly head.

And now they’re nothing but embrace.
Head to chest, listening eternally to the
thrum hidden behind an ashen cell.
I wonder if the sun exploded right now,
which of these strangers would pull my
head to their chest and let the ash blanket us.

I have my theories, of course.
There’s a girl with pink hair I pass
everyday now and I can’t help but
wonder if she sees colors the same.
If that pink hue looks like green

or like falling or like the sound it makes when a
volcano hacks death into the street or the thrum
of a heartbeat wrapped in skin and bone and muscle
or the sound it makes when an organ
plays at a wedding or
what it even looks like to me.
I wonder if she sees the light sparking
off of everybody’s fingertips but her own,
or if that’s just me.

And if the sun exploded, would I feel it?
Would the explosion of such a holy star
look like the illumination between everyone
else’s knuckles? Who of these eight billion
would pull my ear to their chest to make my
last memory the sound of someone else living?
How many could?
Does the sun exploding make the same
sound to everybody, or does it sound
more like a heartbeat to someone else?

Oh, hail me,
I want nothing but embrace.

–

Ruby Davis is an aspiring writer and undergraduate student living in North Carolina. She likes writing poetry and science fiction/fantasy short stories.