The Sun by Emily Torrey

I swallowed the sun.

Whole, and raw, and burning.

Before it could sink into the cutting blacktop mountains,

that stood faint and regal in front of me,

or drown in the pool of shining oiled river,

swirling below with the faintest whisper of true reflection.

Before I lost it-

my sun-

I crushed it, with fist, phalanx, and whole figure.

Its inky yolk soon sailing criss- cross

through the iodized waters of my crying cerulean irises,

waves leaking indigoes, pinks, yellowed golds, and fading reds

down to my shoulders,

previously callow of such beauty,

and lighting within my deep, tired core, the world.

For now I see;

I see beauty in the wisps of hair that curve from eyelids on the one who is loved,

in the tree,

that is framed in my frosted window,

and which in the summer relinquishes a perfectly soft pale orange peach

into the hands of the one who is hungry.

I see beauty in myself,

who is now lighting my own precious world from the inside out.

And watching,

as the ones who are sad,

the ones who are waiting,

waiting for the day when their own light will be swallowed,

and their eyes will swim with silent, golden tears.

These eyes which will grip tight the unseen,

unextinguished beauty which quietly surrounds us all.