The Three Deaths

At the sentencing, a snake of pain
roiled inside her veins. She did not

faint or scream, or sink to the white tile
the way Alma did. She stuck her finger

in the ripped hole of her pocket’s
lining, she felt the inside of the wool

coat, the nowhere of material,
that black hole of seam and stitch.

She saw his face, blank, borrowed
from the grim bark of a tree.

In Mexico, he told her once, there
are three deaths. First, the one

where you learn you will die.
Then the one where you die.

And the last is the last time
someone says your name.

She writes his name inside her
coat and then draws her hand

back out. She will say it until
she no longer knows her own mouth.

His name will be her total sum.
His third death will never come.

Read more from Issue 17.2.