Sixteen Live Photos of an Angel by Kyle Tianshi (17, California)

If I rewind the clock, this is what I’ll see.
 
Your truck drawing in dust as it spins away from Purcellville, Virginia.
My pursed lips and your toothy smile in front of the U-Haul, leaves defying gravity.
Returning the bouquet of lilies to the cashier, who doesn’t ask why I’m dressed in black.

---

Light slanting the pen’s shadow across the ink of my apology letter, which unwrites itself.
You flipping me off in the parking lot instead of ignoring me like you did the last three times.
Your hazy reflection in a tall glass of soda you can’t afford at the restaurant where we fought.
Forgetting the sunkenness and shame when I find you crouched behind a fast-food counter,
and when I ask about law school you tell me that you “have a job here now.”
Loading boxes into your old condo because it’s January and at this point in the story you’ve unsold it with the money from your mother’s treatment.
Rewinding the words of the call that made you collapse, one by one.
The elation in your pupils vanishing when you forget that the school recommended you to pursue law, like you always wanted.
Your mom’s spit-roasted chickens, once crackling golden, now raw, and the dogs unchewing the giblets.
Your mom’s tumor shrinking to a one-dimensional point.
 
At the center of it all, you and me at a coffee shop.
Envisioning the things we wanted to be. We began,
 
but I wish we would’ve tied the loose ends, I wish
 
I would have known to tether you to me when you
said, “My mother is my only anchor.”
 
And in twenty years time I know
 
you’ll be the legal counsel for the Milwaukee Brewers and I’ll have a seat on the Senate floor,
and we’ll meet by Ashbury Bridge in the cool evening, stare at our quivering past selves
in the waters, pray to God, whom we’ve both come to believe and in this final shot
your grin will be as broad and dimpled and white-toothed as the day we first met.

​Kyle Tianshi is a seventeen-year-old student from San Diego, California. He wrote his first book at seven and has since self-published five novels. Kyle has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and is an alum of the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and Iowa Young Writers Studio programs. Kyle has a minor planet named after him by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory for his research on detecting microplastics in water. In his free time, Kyle enjoys learning Latin, reading Christopher Nolan screenplays, watching baby Pekingese videos, and cooking good food.