Obit

by Victoria Chang

I understood then that darkness is falling without an end. That darkness is not the absorption of color but the absorption of language.

She switched places with her shadow because suffering changes shape and happens secretly.

Lover of raising his hand, language lived a full life of questioning.

His favorite was to write the world in black and white and then watch people try and read the words in color.

When language leaves, all you have left is tone, all you have left are smoke signals. I didn’t know she was using her own body as wood.

I shoved the teeth into my mouth. But having two sets of teeth only made me hungrier.

The way we assume all tears taste the same. The way our sadness is plural, but grief is singular.

All the times I have silenced someone by covering their mouth with mine.

Sometimes all I have are words and to write them means they are no longer prayers but are now animals. Other people can hunt them.

In hangman, the body forms while it is being hung. As in, we grow as we are dying.