The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

Once you know something, you can’t un-know it.

The killer whales are the most misunderstood of the whales. To begin with, although everyone calls them whales, they’re actually dolphins. For hundreds of years, people believed killer whales were man-eaters. It’s not true. They don’t attack humans. Killer whales travel in pods, and hunt, play, and rest together. In the wild, the females can live up to a hundred years. A mother’s offspring stays with her for life. They mourn their dead.

I hardly remember how things felt during the Before: when I never had to think about breathing or walking or running any more than I did about eating or sleeping. Those were just things the body did—without pain, without effort. Now the shortness of breath comes and goes. My body—I want the old one back.

I have moments where I forget. Until my body reminds me—and, like an eclipse, everything darkens.

People think death is this peaceful glow, softness, dreamlike, but it’s ugly, dirty, smelly, lonely, painful.

We live our lives not realizing which moments are special or which are ordinary—what will we remember, what memories will we try to grab onto, to hold close? All of these moments that make up a life.