The Honeys

by Ryan La Sala

Death isn’t the end of a life, but the division of it. When someone dies, their soul scatters into all the things they’ve ever given away. Love. Bruises. Gifts. You struggle to piece together what’s left—even the things that hurt—just to feel haunted.

I coveted not just their beauty, but their freedom to embody beauty.

grief, I have learned, cracks us into pieces that make all sorts of strange, alarming shapes—

I leave the lip gloss on. Bright things in nature are often poisonous. Let that be my defense, then. Let Aspen watch, and predators prowl, and all the waiting jaws yawn wider. I will be a ruin to consume.

I make sure every single one of them sees me apply not one, not two, but three coats of lip gloss before dinner. This earns a few blinks. And the shaky silence that follows me asking How do I look? is the sound of a small world that just got a little bigger. God’s work, I tell myself. You’re doing God’s work, Mars.

From a physicist’s perspective, a person is never really gone. They’ve just changed forms. The energy and particles that make them up have disorganized, merged back with the world, united with nature in cycles that are eternal. It’s easy to believe that out here—in woods that feel heavy with eternity.

“Is everything an act to you?” “Everything is an act to everybody.”