Hundred Day

Zion, Beach Park, not far from Lake Michigan’s
shore: some of the streetlights don’t work any-
more, blankets of white mirage

the rurality further into a posterboard of my
weird, Illinois dreams. Dad has ice cream in his
beard. This is where the cows grow.

Out of our yet-shapen mouths, we keep calling it, ‘hunnid day’.

Or, ‘a hunnid’, or just, ‘hunnid’.

Outside, someone is grabbed by the throat and his mouth is filled with ice.

He comes in red and crying, scratching at his head.

At the pencil dispenser, I notice a meek trail of blood drops on the white tiles.

I follow timidly for a few units.

There are no windows in the hallway.

My family is moving back to California, and though I’ve won the student council presidency,

I have to abdicate to Andrea.

I congratulated her with my hand with her hand for more than a moment, less than a moment.

She felt like what I think about when a cartoon animal is overtly feminine.

I cut off my antlers and use them as pencils, I dip my pencils into dollops of blood.

The fluorescent hallway flickers and turns and opens to where I am,

at the window, closing the blinds per request, and inside the classroom the lights are turned off.

And the children dip their faces into the sharp orange halos while the mauve to black

pulls on their antecontours and their ears, I see this, and we smile at the cupcake arrangement

with disjointed songs about summer or spring or something coming for us all.

No one can know who blows those candles out.

That’s when the real darkness sets in.

Years later, in California, we fawn-step away from the shooter’s radiant

footsteps shrouding the ground where the sun is supposed to lay.

In the darkroom, in our warm huddle, I slowly raise my hands to my face until I can feel them

but I still do not see.

The lights come back on, I open the blinds, it’s snowing hard and it’s Friday and

after today there will be ninety-nine school days left until the summer.

My cupcake tastes like nothing, I don’t know what anything is.

I put my hand to my face and wipe away what I think is a dollop of frosting

on my cheek.

Tonight, as my room seals with sleep, my dad will funny walk inside and

rub his stubble on my face. It burns and it’s funny, we laugh.

There are only so many days left.

____
Micah Westcott lives in New York, New York.