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Every now and then, I allow myself to imagine my grandparents having sex. The erotic cinema version. That is, I focus on the lighting. Where it's catching, or if there is any at all.

In the beginning, I was just staring into a void. Their black and white skins were molting together under satin sheets of absolute darkness. My dad never mentioned the specific circumstances of their brief encounter during the war, that forbidden blip that throttled our dynasty of mulatto bastards into being. But every time I peer into that void, something pertinacious shudders within the ancestral attic. A dusty light with no name flicks on.

Maybe an oil lamp. Their shadows are dissolving into a floral pattern lining shelled out walls. I can tell the room isn't hers. She wouldn’t risk sneaking un soldat noir, allied or not, under the nose of her comrades in the resistance. And besides, the walls of her home were already waterlogged with fallen soldiers.

Maybe explosions. Outside, the floral patterns vogue into a spring thicket into which they’ve crawled to build a lover’s nest. Victory Day is only weeks away. Flashes of brilliance are dancing across their teeth playing bittersweet jazz.

Whatever it is, it's not a bright lightβ€”but it's doing the most: It's catching in the mirror of their eyes.

I try to examine my reflection more closely, but the glass is already rotting into infinity: the hour, what they whispered, in which languageβ€”est-ce qu'elle a dit β€˜oui’? Tangles of hyphae emerge from between the shards, slowly fermenting photons and phonemes into an opaque liquid, on which the beloved bastards of tomorrow will suckle.

Every now and then, I allow myself imagine what it tastes like.



        Danielle is a writer currently living in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. With loved ones spread across four continents, her writing often addresses themes of movement, homesickness, and beyond-human kinship. She’s deeply inspired by posthumanism, feminist horror, somatics, and sick bass lines. Her poetry has been published in 50 Shades of Black, PRISM international, and la Guillotine.