“Solar Flares”
by Kirsten Nelson

 They say the light fades from your eyes when you die. Are you fucking kidding me? That’s like saying the earth is moving farther and farther away from the sun, but the last time I caught the news, this headline in bold letters screamed out to the public: “NEAR MISS: SOLAR FLARES COME DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO EARTH.” Well shit, I thought. We’re only getting closer.

It’s been (hang on a second) onetwothreefourfive six whole years since I watched that cliché light fade from your eyes and I still cling to every breath before that moment, every hug, every kiss, every time I heard you scream so loudly that all I could do was cover my ears and hum along to the beat of your yelling. I hang to every piece of magnetism between us that ever caused a flare to erupt toward planet earth.

But you’re still dead and I’m still trying to figure out a metaphor comparing that fact to the sun. Does it even matter what a metaphor typed out with weary fingers at 3 AM means? I’m waiting for the headline to read out, “NO MORE SOLAR FLARES.”

There’ll always be solar flares, though. Tentwentythirty a million years from now, when neither of us matter anymore, someone will still see solar flares.