Aftermath

Artwork by Ananya Singh, staff artist

I. our seraphs have fallen.

there’s crimson running down my brick

walls, silver tongued devils wish me good

fortune unlike my terrible intuition of doom.

I cower inside my body waving a white flag.

II. permanent losses etch themselves

back into your memory one way

or another. and you believed

them gone until that trauma echoes

like glass shattering in an empty house

III. somehow it’s wintertime

and I sulk inside my favorite hoodie

waiting for closure from this year

of yesterday’s that merged into months

and body bags filled with names I’ll never know

IV. seven days from now

i’ll sit on the mountaintops with

my legs swinging off the edge

considering all that I could’ve lost

but didn’t when the plagues arrived

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Alana Brown-Davis is a sixteen year old Mississippian on the verge of a Hulu anime addiction. She has rediscovered her love for Outkast and everything southern since the pandemic and is a proud country bumpkin. She is a current junior at South Pike High School where she participates in the band playing trumpet and mellophone. She aggravates her mother and friends on a regular basis and is currently learning how to drive which has been a very interesting ride. Pun intended.

Ananya is an 18 year old artist and animator. She was born in India and moved to Chicago at 4 years old, and is now an animation student at SCAD. She might be a Youngarts finalist but she is also a fierce competitor on the nap battlefield.