By Josephine Confido, JC 1 Truth

Maybe I couldn’t move because the white light approaching me had tantalized my infant heart into believing I’d just been born — so depraved of warmth, a distant yearning for days past.

A fleeting thought will pass me; and I will remember, that I was there once…in this world, and I could stay in it for all of eternity. 

I’ll think of the time we ate supermarket sushi after a convention my parents got mad about, six thirty at night. I’ll think of the time I fell in love with a boy I’d never seen, of a time where I’d thaw myself in ice if it meant I’d wake up being held warm. 

I’ll think about every bad joke, about every awkward situation, about houses I’ve passed and trees that exist only in mourning. I’ll think of every warm meal, every cold one, of ones I didn’t even get to eat and how I told you, I’m sixteen and I don’t know what to do.

I’ll never know what to do.

I’ll never turn around and catch the bus to my favorite diner again to have my favorite pesto pasta. I’ll never be able to hug my best friends ever again, fight with my mom, hide a fish in the cabinet above my head again — get into trouble, and laugh about it afterward. I’ll never laugh again. 

So, I’ll lay on the ground of this highway. And I’ll bleed on it in hopes that some of me will seep into the earth and remember that I was alive. 

I’ll be alive forever.