Excerpt From Cherry Blossoms

There are pink cherry blossoms embedded in my cornrows and captive to the bottom of my sneakers.
In fact, they were littered everywhere on the desolate street.
It seems that they rained from the milky white sky.

I wish they were real.

I wish I could slide my hand over a pile of cherry blossoms and rub at least one fine petal in between my small fingers.

I wish I could smell their sweet and seemingly delicate fragrance.
Ha, delicate fragrance. What does that even mean?

But I cannot, they are sheer make-believe, figments of my wild imagination. The dreary truth, the whole truth, is that they aren’t pink cherry blossoms. They don’t smell of honey like I formulated in my head, and they surely didn’t drop from the milky white sky. They didn’t drop from anything, because they weren’t real. They aren’t real. The scene before me blurs together in the shape of a spiral, in a messy amalgamation—until every subject of my view melts into a stark jet black.

A pause. The black stands still.

The black drips from the edges of my vision like wet paint.