the tender memento mori
raw is the fear that strolls alongside finitude, yet:
it is
pushing;
it is
delicious;
it is the
only certainty;
because time
is the train
that barrels over track;
dots on the i’s
are that goodnight punctuation
to your sentence;
still,
i read once that we are the sole envy
of all gods and timeless deities;
for
a kiss in Niagara,
stained lipstick on letters,
Mami’s arroz con gandules,
& how i held her hand
after the stroke;
for
the tree on my brother’s house,
nephews tower over me now,
& how i left Rockford
a little less ruined, needy, faithless
i loosen the grasp on my bedsheets
and i can still feel
my heart thump
because one day
it will
come to
an abrupt
sort of—
Giulyana Gamero is a senior communication major at SUNY Geneseo and the former Youth Poet for the city of Rockford. She loves to take on artistic projects in any medium, such as 89.3 WGSU’s Sunflower Story Hour, a paranormal audio drama. Her writing has appeared in Gandy Dancer issues 13.1 and 14.1, The Lamron, and in Carnegie Hall’s Traveling the Spaceways. Her visual art has appeared at the Rockford Art Museum and Bridgeport Art Center.