Light

Seven thirty, and it's still light outside. The sky is luminous blue. Small birds flit across the expanse, black drops against cloud-brushed sapphire. Behind me, orange tints the horizon where dusk is creeping up through the still-barren trees. Springtime has strengthened the sun. Light fills the air still, gleams and glows.

And I too am light. I was a dark drop of despair, plunging through endless space--but the sun shone through me, piercingly, and now: I have evaporated, am drifting in the warm air. I will not fall.

There is a lightness in me, a clarity at my core. My heart floats, steady, steady. I breathe in, and it seems the whole sky dwells for a moment within the vault of my ribs. Breathe in, and it seems for a moment I rise off the ground, that the sky lifts my weight. The balls of my feet touch the earth, but no weight rests on them. Breathe in. Breathe in, and the sun shines on my cold heart.

And breathe out and come back to the world.

The sky releases me, lowering me carefully. I am, again, my small self. But the sun is still shining, and the naked trees are putting out hopeful, knobbly buds.