Magnitude

In two weeks, you will have been dead for four years.

Yesterday, we turned twenty-one. I am one long breath 

away from forty. What does time mean for dead people? 

Less than it means for the living, I’m sure. What is 

the point of Botox if you can’t take it with you when 

you go? I want to know what it feels like to be dust 

without becoming dust. I want to know where you are, 

but I don’t really want to know. Life is short and too long,

all in the same sigh. I went to bed sixteen and woke up

in my late twenties. I can see time unfolding in front of me

like a bridge splitting. During the Northridge earthquake 

of 1994, a section of the freeway collapsed. It was early 

in the morning hours when it happened. The sun hadn’t yet

come up, and a motorcyclist unknowingly drove off 

the strip to his death. He couldn’t see where it ended. 

You couldn’t see where it ended, either.

Danielle is a professor of creative writing in Southern California. Winner of the Touchstone Literary Magazine Debut Prize in Nonfiction, a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction, and nominee for The Pushcart Prize 2022 & 2023 and Best of the Net 2022, 2023, 2024 & 2025, her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review and others. @danielleshorr