Yawp

Para la artista multidisciplinaria Laurel Valladares

"But you. Rain on the hot sidewalk.

Turned mist. Handsome aura. Gone."

She walks in shadows, like the storm,

Of restless winds and skies undone;

Colorado skies.

And all that’s lost in light and form

fades where her weary footsteps run.

But you.

Rain on the hot sidewalk.

Turned mist.

Handsome aura.

Gone.

From the cave that sees the city’s heart,

where the streets hum with the weight of time,

I watch you flicker in old photographs,

whispered between seasons,

caught in the hush of the coming change.

One sigh the more, one star the less,

And night would swallow all she knows.

No gilded words, no silken dress,

Just moonlight pale on dark repose.

Seize the day, they say,

but the day is a vapor,

a trick of light on wet pavement,

a name unspoken, fading on the tongue.

Do not ask what the stars have written,

nor count the winters left to burn

the tide will rise, the shore will swallow.

A love that burned, too bright to last,

a sacred heart that cries 

a mind that raged, a heart that fell,

no peace, no innocence to tell.

And what is love, if not a fall?

Not a rise, never a rise,

but a step into nothing,

a gamble with gravity,

a beautiful surrender

to the madness of being alive.

And still, the snow falls

silent, 

slow,

erasing footprints 

we thought would show.

Shadows and 

mist.

-ER

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