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me, when I was certain I could feel my cells shifting around for the
possibility of another angel?
When he stopped being angry, Pat came home with a beautifullywrapped present for Coby. Yellow wrapping paper decorated with
love in curlicue cursive. She opened it to discover a onesie, for
a newborn. No one but God knows, Coby says to herself, if our
baby ever really existed or not. She thinks of the argument for the
beginning of life and personhood that happens every day in signs
and protests beside the hospital where they had gone to confirm her
pregnancy had ended.
She accepts communion. The wine tastes purple. The bread,
which is dry, tastes like light. Not the shifting, multicoloured lights
of Pat’s mouth on hers in bed, but a faint colour like that of white
daffodils that still carry in them the loudn ess of yellow, somehow,
in their daffodil shapes, in her own nostalgic understanding of
what a daffodil looks like. She swallows, aware of her body and its
processes, and notices that the angel with green wings seems to be
singing.
Ruth Daniell is a Canadian writer, the winner of the
2014 Young Buck Poetry Prize by Contemporary Verse 2,
and a current nominee for the Pushcart Prize for poetry
published in One Throne Magazine. Her poems and
stories have appeared or are forthcoming in journals
across North America and online.