Papa

You never did learn to love a woman. Your mother. Mine. How you made me. You told me it was an accident. That life just happens to you. Did you smell my hair when I was born? Mama told me my head looked like a field of strawberries. All the wetlands & drizzle. I never learned to love the rain. I was always too frightened to smell its aftermath, flooding in the drains. Fluid of lost potential. Raw & pumping under all the steps of our feet. I never did learn to love you. It’s a very curious way to die. You, waiting to let go. Me, waiting to watch. It’s all time now. Passing your blue-green eyes. Watch my body float in November. When the winds & clouds kiss. My teeth chatter in the rain. All purple now from frost. The heat from your body gone now. Your words echo against the wind till all the memories lose their color. Trapped, now, in shapeless clouds; you’ll be gone from my heart by December.

Rina Shamilov (she/they) is a writer from Brooklyn, NY, and an MFA candidate at Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program. Her favorite literary genres are Southern/Gothic horror, American 20th-century modernism, and creative nonfiction. Rina’s writing has been featured in The Foundationalist, Lilith Magazine, New Voices Magazine, and The Forward.

A Song for Rina