Where once one adult held two small hands up the hill, three adults
now strolled up the mound, to gaze. The northern lights, surely,
would recognize their efforts, or simply that the passage of time
was beautiful, meaningful, and recycled instead of wasted.
The wind abraded the swingset’s rasping, the pines
drew in the toxins, and the two children watched their mother again
walk forward into the night, and almost evanesce. They watched again
as she came back, asking if they thought the sky northwards
looked green to them too. Without exchanging words,
the siblings smiled and nodded against the weight of aging dreams, as if
the way the coruscant astral bodies radiated just outside the city
was more than enough.
Luke Carmichael Valmadrid (he/him) enjoys cooking tofu, qualitative research, playing videogames with faraway friends, and trying to improve his volleyball serve. Some of his work can be found with celestite poetry and wind-up mice journal.
Illustration by C.B. Auder.
NEXT – God Girl
PREVIOUS – Paradigm of prayers
RETURN to Issue Eleven
Claw & Blossom 