Yesterday evening I walked up Beacon toward Commonwealth—not many people out. As if my presence caused it, all the streetlights blinked on at once. For a moment, I thought something else might happen: a chance encounter with a classmate, a twenty-dollar bill crumpled in the gutter, the perfect ending to a poem writing itself in autumn drizzle on the sidewalk. I stuffed my hands deeper into the pockets of my hoodie, continued my walk around Uno’s and onto Boylston. The lights probably flicked off in a similar way at dawn when I was sleeping. I always thought I would like to be asleep when my lights go out. Completely unconscious like Uncle Walter, whose heart disintegrated under a surgeon’s scalpel. This morning walking to class down Bay State in the breeze—leaves shimmering, cheering me on—I realize it would be better to die laughing.
Autumnal Equinox
Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer and visual artist. He is the author of Ubasute, which won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, and the author of the full-length collection Common Grace, forthcoming from Beacon Press in Fall 2022. He is a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, DMQ Review, Tule Review, Louisiana Literature, The Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. Aaron earned his MFA in creative writing from Boston University and is also the author and illustrator of Text, Don’t Call: An Illustrated Guide to the Introverted Life (TarcherPerigee, 2017).