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 the author of Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute (Slapering Hol Press, 2021). His honors include a MacDowell Stanford Calderwood Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowship Award, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, The Cincinnati Review, Consequence, Shenandoah, Thimble Literary Magazine, Gordon Square Review, Cave Wall, and elsewhere. Caycedo-Kimura earned his MFA from Boston University and teaches creative writing at Trinity College and University of Hartford.