Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Paris Review

    Rachel Eliza Griffiths

    Mar 03, 2020 1 minute

    HUNGER

    Weeks after her death I came to the garden windowto marvel at sudden pale feathers catching, scatteringpast the rainy glass. I looked for magic everywhere.Signs from the afterlife that I was, indeed, distinct.Beneath the talon of a red-tailed hawk a pigeonmoved briefly until it didn’t. The hawk strippedthe common bird, piercing its thick neck. Beak probing bodyuntil I could see the blood from where I stood inside.This could happen, naturally enough, even in Brooklyn.This could happen whether or not my mother was dead.I didn’t eat for weeks because it felt wrong to want bread & milk.The hawk’s face turning red, beautiful as it plucked & pickedits silver-white prey apart. It wasn’t magic, but hungrily, I watched.As if I didn’t know memory could devour corpsescaught alive in midair. I opened the window,knelt on the fire escape. I was the prey& hawk. This was finally myself swallowingthose small, common parts of me. Tearing all of that awayinto strips, pulling my breast open to the bone. I saw myselftorn apart, tearing & tearing at the beautiful face,the throat beneath my claw. My grieving face redwith being exactly what I knew myself to be.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Paris Review

    The Paris Review1 min read
    Trollope
    What a sad day,full of black, blue,red, and yellow umbrellas.Everyone in the world,whatever their disposition,seemed to be crying at once,while I hit upon readingTrollope, and so remained a weekamong the grouse. That was mydisposition. Sometimes Iwou
    The Paris Review35 min read
    An Eye In The Throat
    My father answers the phone. He is twenty-three years old, and, as everyone does in the nineties, he picks up the receiver without knowing who is calling. People call all day long, and my parents pick up and say, “Hello?” and then people say, “It’s C
    The Paris Review1 min read
    Life Poem 1
    A leaf falls here/there, now/thenbehind the rain, a curtain of rain,the trees in their own time.I see now that time falls in layers. There were deer there once, in the clearing,three deer, large as memory objects.They stood in a circleas if they knew

    Related Books & Audiobooks