Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

I will love you like the ocean loves the sand.

Motherhood was, by nature, a thing you did alone.

No one is all bad. No one is all good. We live as equals in the murky gray between.

thinking how love was not at all what her mother had promised it would be.

There was nothing like the love you had for your own child.

Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long

Grief was a loneliness that felt like a planet.

I’m sorry for your loss. The phrase felt blank and lifeless, like her loss was a cell phone left on the seat of a taxi.

You have never believed in God, but you address him now, last-ditch, halfhearted. God, if you are out there. God, if you can hear me. God—