Hesitation
Meridian Donnelly
after the bomb dropped, india fled
to her father’s arms. the sky was red,
the sun white and clouded like the moon.
the island’s third house was dyed black,
a shadow stretched over the crimson sheet
of the horizon. sigils of war were seared
onto india’s shielded skin, brand marks
of her own indecencies. she did not heed
her father’s warning call, come inside,
and now she picks apart the muscles
of his shrapnel-shredded gut, throat, skull;
peels the flaps of skin away from rosy cheeks
and pretends the gape of his teeth is smiling.
MERIDIAN DONNELLY is a junior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, AL. She is a creative writing student whose poems are most often inspired by the various translated works of Russian author Yevgeny Yevtushenko. More specifically, she is inspired by "Fury". She has received the judge's special recognition from the Alabama Writers' Forum in the High School Literary Arts Awards and Scholarship Competition, and has been published every year in her school's literary magazine since 2012.