by Heather Parker 

As the ocean blue sky shadows above 

me, a cloudless aura wraps me up as

the sun is trying to cheer my heart

but it won’t touch the darkness I feel.

White doves flying free from their cage

as if they are flying too somehow

capture your soul ascending into the 

heavens, bringing you back down. 

Numb, sadness, numb, sadness is

all I know how to feel anymore since

I watched you slowly slip away from

my racing heart and sweaty eye sockets. 

I pretend the white doves are still out 

searching for your soul that 

hasn’t ascended yet into the 

celestial afterlife that awaits me. 

Numb, sadness, numb, sadness is

the only way I know how to cope with

knowing I can’t pick up that black iPhone on

the wooden table, hear a tone as I push each number.

Knowing good and well that soul won’t pick up and 

some stranger will answer and try to 

convince me that I have the wrong number 

even though I have dialed this number before. 

Hundreds of times, I would call that number and 

hear the voice of a soul on the other end, excited 

and yearning to hug me again as the soul has 

done so many times before that day. 

But here I am, salty fluid leaking from the 

holes in my skull, reckless flow onto

this piece of a tree that once lived,

just like a soul I lost once did.