Why, Tomorrow, I Will Not Be Afraid

by Silvi Alcivar

Today I wrote a sentence and my brain spilled out. When I wrote enough sentences to make up a paragraph, my heart lept out too. When I wrote enough paragraphs to make a page, my skin slipped off, neatly, then piled at my feet. When I wrote enough pages to make a memoir, an arm picked up my slipped-off skin, suspended it high enough for it to hang, catch a bit of wind. I don't know whose arm it was, or where it came from, or why, considering all the piles of flesh in the world, it picked me up off the ground, and dangled me just so. But I do know, that for just a moment, I resembled the Sisteen Chapel's self portrait of Michael Angelo.

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Silvi Alcivar, author of What $55 Can Buy, is a graduate of Penn State's MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing. She now lives in San Francisco, and recently discovered she loves the ocean as much as trees. ("If only," she sighs to herself, looking out at the sea, "I could wrap my arms around thee.")