Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

The quiet is delicious, a gasping relief.

But if good can be tainted with the bad that comes after, then where do you place it? How do you count it? How much is it really worth?

There is no such thing as good or evil. Instead, we have memory and choice, and we all live at various points on the spectrum between. We are created by what has happened to us, combined with who we choose to be. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. All of you, for allowing me into your home. Jenny, for everything. If I’m simply a series of choices, I’m glad they led me here.”

It was an ambitious concept, justice. The idea that your lot in life could be based on your own choices.

It scared her to realize there was no compass. There were only days and the choices she made within them.

Sometimes I feel like I’m shedding myself, she told Sunshine once, the only person who understood. Sometimes it’s like I’m stuck on the floor, searching for the cast of my own skin.

So Sunshine understood how time could be a knife. Lodged already, just waiting to twist.

The past was a thing you could open like a box, gaze down on with starry eyes. But it was too dangerous to step inside.

I don’t know, you said, irritated. My thoughts. My beliefs. Don’t you think it’s important to know that something of yourself exists beyond your own body? Something that can outlive death? Shawna only shrugged and said: I think some people have left enough already.

As Saffy gazed up at the ceiling, hot tears burning down her cheeks, she prayed that the difference between good and evil was simply a matter of trying.

Forgiveness is flimsy. Forgiveness is like a square of warm sun on the carpet. You’d like to curl up in it, feel its temporary comfort—but forgiveness will not change you. Forgiveness will not bring you back.

From that moment forward, she would forget that tempting almost-world; there was only this, a brief and imperfect and singular reality. She would have to find a way to live it.

It seemed miraculous, such cosmic grace. Like the first peep of green after a long gray winter.

Lavender knew, then, that the world was a forgiving place. That every horror she had lived or caused could be balanced with such gutting kindness. It would be a tragedy, she thought—inhumane—if we were defined only by the things we left behind.

You have known, of course, that this moment would arrive, but you did not expect it to feel so trivial, just another second blending with the millions that make up your insignificant little life.

You don’t need to have it all. You only need to figure out how much is enough.

From wherever Izzy is now, she wishes she could say: Before all this, my shoulders burned scarlet. I peeled off the flakes, flicked them into the sink. There were things I felt, before the fear. I ate an orange in the sun. Let me tell you how it tasted.