Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

Author:Danya Kukafka
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Dear Ansel.

I hope the world has been good to you. I hope you have been good to it.

Dear Ansel.

My love. My heart. My little boy.

I—

* * *

Home. The smell of leaves, trampled into the ground. Damp oak, the smoky char of Sequoia’s cooking stove. When Lavender creaked open the door to her room, her patterned quilt sat folded on the edge of the bed, gentle and welcoming, just how she’d left it.

The next morning, the women recited a poem. Juniper herself had requested printed copies of Lavender’s favorite Mary Oliver and placed a sheet on each clean breakfast plate. Harmony was sheepish—when she laid a hand on Lavender’s shoulder to excuse her from dish duty, Harmony’s fingers trembled like she knew she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t Harmony’s fault; Lavender could only blame her for the idea. Lavender herself had stepped into that gallery.

After dinner, she and Sunshine took a walk around the valley. They sank into the evening glimmer, the vague insect clatter, the sleepy rustle of birds in their nests. When the campfires had been extinguished, when the lights flickered one by one and Gentle Valley was blanketed in sleep, Sunshine followed Lavender back to her bedroom. They left the lights off, clamored fully clothed beneath Lavender’s sheets. Lavender shook with the grief of it all, as Sunshine wrapped herself tenderly around, the shape of her body a reassurance against Lavender’s heaving spine. In another life, maybe, Lavender would have turned to face Sunshine, would have let her tongue ask about its own wanting. But this was Lavender’s life, and Sunshine was simply a good friend who knew what she needed—a swaddle, a rocking, the sweet lullaby of skin.

When Sunshine fell asleep, Lavender stood in the generous dark. She pulled the chair from the desk beneath her window, settled her aching hips into the frame. In the moonlight, the blank sheet of paper was luminescent. The pen in her hand a glistening dagger.

Dear Ansel, she thought, as she pressed the ink to the sheet. A missive she would write but knew she’d never send, another addition to a universe of what-ifs.

Dear Ansel. Tell me. Show me. Let me see what you’ve become.

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