by Gabriela V. Everett

You never failed.

You never told those secrets. The night with the whiskey and car
never happened.
The mail-order brides all ended up happy. Your rival gave you roses and said,
“I’ve always loved you, you know.”

The nightmares stopped. You forgave yourself, the one who lives in the timeline next door,
and she cried:
thank you,
thank you,
I hope to see you on the other side. You are
perfect and whole
and you know it.
Magic is real and you see it everyday;

it’s quiet.

Gabriela V. Everett

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Gabriela V. Everett is a queer, mixed-race artist and writer based in her hometown of Las Vegas. She possesses a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and an affinity for coffee at midnight. Her publications include visual art in Chicago’s Mementos, short fiction in Hair Trigger, Allium, Mulberry Literary, with poetry and prose in SFUAD’s literary magazine, Glyph. Her prose piece “Love Poems for Death” received SFUAD’s award for Best New Voice in 2016. Her body of work focuses on existential struggle and seeks to illuminate the growing pains of life, recognizing both hardship and victory.

_{Artist: Gael Rapon}