Gabriella Zamora, “Midnight Snack”
Find the lantern hidden in black screens. It points towards both heaven and hell. It holds your soul, and, combined with the collection of metaphors about cannibalism and frost in the hearts of laptops, it manifests in cramped phone cases and explodes into light from the LEDs that hang above hospital beds. The heat that emits from metal framework is the magic from sorcerer staffs, with the added bonus of infertility. It is the weight scaled off cliffs and the buzz only heard in the moments between seconds, between past and present. We are so far removed. So blinded by sun rays and white sheets of plastic. We have evolved past love and into an indolence never unmatched. The sky is the color of closed eyes; the clouds shine like glasses; the sun the reflection, and the moon, barely visible, is watching the scene play out. We each get a letter. Each has a key for the recluse. Hearts break towards the unknowable past. We reach the skies and climb, freer than the birds, into cataclysm. There are bird eggs in the ceilings, past the portal beams and into second nature. We hunt for vultures. We scavenge scraps of diamonds and run towards the sun ad delerium. We do this, a motion hot with raged-out lungs and framed minds, and we remind ourselves of outlines on whiteboards, of the last real knowledge we ever bestowed.