By Mia Trac

I died. Just like that, I couldn’t add any more seconds or moments or memories to my collection of life. I felt myself fall onto the pavement and I looked up at the glowing moon. I never could see a face on the moon until now. The face stared back at me, between us nothing but heaven, the dark night and scrawny oak trees, or maybe they were birch. 

Caw caw! Two crows called above me as if they were almost taunting me as I lay there like a helpless soul. My vision is getting blurry now and I am breathing funny. The moon is now only a big ball of light and its face has dispersed in my vision. The trees seem skinnier and scrawnier. 

I hope the moon is not the last face I see. I hope to see my beautiful Amanda for the last time. I wish to see her long frizzy hair and her emerald eyes. I wish to take in and smell her lilac perfume once more! I wish to tell her everything about everything all at once before I go. Now the world is spinning and making me dizzy. The trees seem to be branching out and getting closer to me.

Oohhh, a gust of wind goes by. My hands are getting colder now and my heart is beating faster as if it is pushing for its final blow. This is what it’s like to be dying. Should I say a prayer? The world is getting darker and darker and blurrier and blurrier. Ooohhh, another gust of wind goes by. Then, everything goes black.

I open my eyes. I could still open my eyes? I thought I was dead and this is not heaven! I thought I was dying. I look down, I have no hands, or legs, or chest or feet, or arms! I am floating above the ground! So, I am dead.I look down once more, and I see my body, lying on the road. It’s a strange phenomenon to see the body that carried me for decades, the body I loved and despised looking at in the mirror, the body that I covered with baggy clothes to hide the ignorant fat, the body that wouldn’t work properly and had to be torn apart and put back together by doctors, my body was lying there, with pale skin, closed eyes, and absolutely no emotion in the face. In my right hand was a bouquet of ruined purple lilacs, and in the other, a velvet black ring box. I want to snag it from my corpse, but I cannot. I have been stripped of my hands, and I am, yet again, a helpless soul.

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Mia Trac is a Vietnamese-Chinese-American high school student. She enjoys writing and reading and her favorite books include “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The “Percy Jackson” series, and “Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng.