THE RAVEN REVIEW
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  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I

Quietus

by Andrew Gibeley​
The night before we unplugged you
we ate burritos and accidentally entered
a Petco before buying a large white 
poster board to collage your life’s photos 
upon for everyone to enjoy at the
post-funeral luncheon on Friday
 
​We visited you one last morning 
and there were air-pumped plastic sheets 
like pool rafts along your hairless legs
which I pressed down with my fingers
so your frail, pale skin was unexposed 
to the elements of the ICU, which smelled 
raw and stale and sounded silent
 
The nurse told us it could take hours
or even a day or two since you still
breathed on your own a bit over the
ventilator tubed down your throat 
but you died within minutes before all
our crying eyes, choking viciously
on your final gasps of air, then nothing
 
That night the summer sky erupted 
thunder storming all around us while we 
drove through the dark in the downpour
to pick up our 9:30 pizza and white wine
as your umbrella broke in my hands
and your body lay idle in the morgue
waiting out the lightning like us

Andrew Gibeley is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. Born and raised in a small town outside Hartford, he graduated from Hamilton College cum laude in 2016 with honors in creative writing and a minor in theatre. He completed the NYU Summer Publishing Institute and is currently a publicist at Abrams Books.