"Almost-Boomerang, Alight" by Kathryn Ross

Almost-Boomerang, Alight

My feed feeds me a picture
of what looked like a bent
trapezoid, or maybe an
almost-boomerang, alight.
Fitting, considering it’s
Australia. Land at the bottom
of the earth, like a great island,
2.97 million mi² long,
in a great sea.

Taken from an astronaut’s-eye-view,
edges glowing as though
the continent’s been gilded
by an ever-setting sun.

“It looks like hell,” my sister says,
voice hushed, and I know she means
it literally. All the cartoons we’d seen
growing up, burning wastelands meant
to always burn.

“It looks like a bloody scab,” I say,
thinking of the pockets of fire as the
freshest parts of the wound.

Later, the feed feeds me Australia
again. And still I see a bloody
scab on a black body. The kind that’s
trying to heal but you keep
scratching off, so it bleeds and
tries again. But you
rake your fingers across it,
over and over and over until
you’ve made a scar.

And maybe later someone sees it,
the blemish on your body, and
asks you, “what happened there?”
And you say, shaking your head,
“My fault. I should have just
left it alone.”

Kathryn Ross

Kathryn H. Ross is the author of essay collection, Black Was Not A Label, from PRONTO and holds a BA and MA in English and Writing. More importantly, she adores cats, warm baths, and Daniel Radcliffe movies. Her work ranges from sentimental and absurd shorts and poetry to lamentation essays about living as a young black woman in America. Read her at speakthewritelanguage.com

Headshot: Whitfield Photographs

Photo Credit: Shayne Schultz