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Sometimes I imagine the morning that you died. Although it wasn’t morning,
it was evening in a dark room. We stood around you like hunters around a deer,
waiting for your last breath. But sometimes I like to imagine it was morning, the
sky a blue brick through the window, the light cresting the tops of your knuckles.
Maybe I was singing, far away and quiet, or maybe I was just watching the glass
turn opaque in the glare and clear again. I like to imagine that you had opened
your eyes to the sound of the single bird sitting on the sill, the two of us still for
just that moment.

Mariel Fechik lives in Chicago, IL and works in a library. She sings for the bands Fay Ray and Tara Terra, and writes music reviews for Atwood Magazine. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Bettering American Poetry, and has appeared in Hobart, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cream City Review, Barren Magazine, and others. She is the author of Millicent (Ghost City Press, 2019) and An Encyclopedia of Everything We've Touched (Ghost City Press, 2018).