Annie Franklin teaches creative writing at Virginia State University, where she is a faculty advisor for The Virginia Normal. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, Ninth Letter, The Journal, and elsewhere. Visit her website at: www.anniefranklinwrites.com.

My Sixth Grade Presentation on the Bombing of Hiroshima

My mother lays her hands across the edges
of the tri-fold board. They are already ruined
with arthritis. I spray her fingers with black

paint and leave empty the presence of her

pain as it was then. We mimic
shadows the blast left of people:
a man lounging on a bank’s steps, someone

curled fetal, hiding. Her hands, my mother

laughs, are perfect templates for terror.
As a child, I had no capacity to understand
how easily people can be erased,

what suffering can mean. A child sees

a shadow and does not know nor care
of its source, even if the darkness is her
own. For the history fair, I wrote of black rain,

the number dead—all these shadows free

from cause and effect, and so it became fantasy,
like a genie’s three wishes: 1. That I will one day
survive when something spectacular

slices open nature’s palm. 2. That we can all live

forever happily, my shadow tattooed
onto my mother’s. 3. That laughing about
pain meant everything would be ok.