Amanda Marie Chiado

Hell & Flowers

My son has a crush on a sad girl. Her charcoal eyeliner a death metal riff; her uncle holding that loaded revolver. My son is too bright to pirouette to her records needled backward. He carries her smile like a blade in his teeth. Her face, an oval opal holds her shadowy downturned eyes, a cold river bend. She parts her hair in the middle like the veil between the here and after. If you saw her shoulders, you would know where the world has settled its score. The freckles on her cheeks are always shifting positions, shrapnel constellations. Every time she sings the song of crows, she dances her fingers through a black loop of yarn, making ladders and cradles, and anything like a bridge that can be destroyed with one swift loosening. Her favorite films give life to phantoms. Her favorite stories are like Persephone, both hell and flowers. My son, my son, takes after his father.

Back to Issue XI…