Shivani Mehta

Ascension

One summer, you walked your sadness on a leash the way people walk a dog. Remember how, immune to gravity, it floated somewhere above your right ear. At night the light was bronze, reverent like the halos around dead saints. Children tied balloons to your sadness, but it did not grow lighter. And what I know of wildflowers, of regret, I learned while standing beside your grave. We are made of glass. We carry our dead behind closed eyes.

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