Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

It was impossible to think about the lives she could have lived without thinking of those she could have saved. So Saffy decided not to consider them at all. 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.

The night was an open sore. The heart was an organ that beat on and on. The trees creaked their unanimous sorrow.

As she told them everything she could remember—the sparkling and the hideous, the fond and the searing—a fraction of her life’s weight seemed to lift with the words.

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.