Heaven, Ashes, Me and You

If there’s a heaven, I sometimes imagine it to look a lot like the sky—one in a dreamsicle sunset.

So smooth and warm, it looks like a big glowing pool you could dive right into without a single splash.

Though maybe, the clouds speak in splashes themselves.

My best friend lights a sparkler and it blooms in the night—smelling of wickedness, crackling and sewing its stitches into the humid air.

In winter, soft cold light pours through my bedroom. My fingertips touch the gold as it paints my walls, my hands. It’s hard and light and cool and warm. And it takes me somewhere else.

To you.

I dream and dream about this: a field. The curve of night sky above me. I’m chasing after someone I’ve never met, but long and long for. Who I know is mine, has always been mine mine mine. And I want a piece for myself.

It feels like this: hot knives in the chest.

They twist and turn and prod for loneliness, make creatures crawl from my skin.

With you, the aches stop. I’m ocean waves; we’re microbes, riding a horse, landing on moons, making ones of our own with paper, scissors, and glue. If I could just find you.

And when it’s bad, it’s so bad. Like fire. You’re screaming, so I am too. And we both fall, burning.

And afterward it’s nothingness. I’m an iced-over freeway—you slip and slide to get to me.

And when you find me, we make a pact. Trumpets call. The fires glow, my ice melts. Wolves howl.

I dream and dream again about how you melted me away. I wake and I’m still dreaming.

But soon the flickering heat, the love turns to ashes. And the ashes grow. They make mountains.

I look up, call out—“where are you? Are you in there?” And I hear nothing at all.

I see you in there. I find faint outlines of your face. But you say nothing, because the ashes don’t speak.

If there’s a heaven, it’s in the sunset. The one I dive in to wash off the ashes.

—By Sadie L., 18, Dallas,