Final.

By: Sosena Audain

Cue Lacrimosa. Cue the splitting of the physical

pears from the classroom tree. Torn apart from me,

a part of me, letting me go to speak

in nothings. Blab about future. I wonder if that baby could

understand, on some level, what the song had

meant. If it could touch the chords of the

heart in some way, even if it was just to grasp at

the space between two ukulele strings moving

about time. To grow, we must think

in and out of our heads for meaning. In three days, my bed

will have probably fostered my bones better

than my own body. This writing may still be the last

flame of the campfire, fire’s tip

of the tongue a bee sting on the wood. In three months, junior year

will forsake me. I’ll be taking my midterms and hopefully recalling

us. You. Loop Lacrimosa. A sun might peek through the skies then, and

maybe my upside-down eyes will ebb out this moment

when my sail aimed homewards. In three years, I will be

doing something scholarly, I hope, at whatever school has recognized whatever

talents I have to offer. What the hell will I be

doing in thirty years. Maybe I’ll have a cat or two

and a wife who loves me enough to remember I

don’t like tomatoes alone, just on hamburgers, and I sleep with

one arm under the pillow beside me, reaching for

response, reaching at nothing. Maybe we’ll have a cottage.

Something we can call a home in something we can call

a life. I love this place. I’m not sure if I’ve said it yet. I love this

place. I don’t want to stop writing. Don’t take this pen away

from me.

Sosena Audain is a writer from Washington, D.C. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and the Sewanee Young Writers Conference. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She has a novella entitled The G.I.V.I.D and is working on a novel entitled Address. When she’s not matchmaking words like people, she is listening to music and she is probably singing along. She likes cats, philosophy, and life itself.