Hayden Park

Last Photograph of God

my brother said he found god in the bottom of a tub
of vanilla bean häagen-dazs, called me collect
from a payphone that still worked, somehow, in Barstow.
said he looked like a frozen black star,
and I said what are you on this time, Ricky,
and he said no, listen, you gotta see this thing.
his voice was the sound of tires on gravel
just before the turn. he asked if i remembered
the time dad took the training wheels off my schwinn
and just let go at the top of the hill.
i don’t remember that. i remember the stitches
and the way the nurse’s pen clicked
four times, a nervous little insect,
before she asked if i had any allergies.
i told ricky i had to go, that the dog
was scratching at the screen door. it wasn’t.
i hung up and threw out the half-eaten pint
of rocky road in my own freezer.
just in case. some things you don’t need to see
to believe. or not-believe. the door is just a door.
it rattles when a truck goes by. it’s rattling now.

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Hayden Park is a high school senior from Southern California, as well as a writer and musician. She is the winner of The Malahat Review’s 2025 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize and a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Medalist. Her poems and prose appear or are forthcoming in The Malahat Review, Slippery Elm (Contest Issue 2025), REDAMANCY Magazine and Yin Literary Magazine, as well as in anthologies from One Page Poetry and TulipTree Publishing. A classically trained pianist and violinist, she performs regularly with orchestras and chamber ensembles.