Wintering Sun
I have arranged my life to follow the movement of light. In the morning, it’s a small square of sun in the center of the bed, and I sit cross-legged within it, a warm prayer. At around noon, it slips into the bathroom, dripping through a slit of window, and I run the hot water and watch the steam rise in a stream of light. It always surprises me, the way air curls around air. I indulge myself in the looking, and on some particularly special days, I'll take my lunch on the toilet lid too, spooning myself a quiet bowl of porridge and egg. Flecks of dust and other speckle and float; shadows angle and arch on the wall. The tiled floor sweats in the intimacy of this touch. Eventually, the light moves beyond this little room, leaves me shuddering and dizzy in a dream quickly dulling. I must see it one more time before it goes. So when afternoon sighs into 5 p.m., I rush outside with my farewells in hand, wave them in the dimming air. The gold thing sleds across asphalt, spins off the sloping earth, barely notices me. It always ends like this, imbalanced. As it ought to be. A hero slicing the sky in flight, a child staring up.
The body’s young light
longs for its ancient source – to
briefly borrow bright
Jessie Lian spent years sneaking lines of poetry into spreadsheets at her corporate job before re-orienting her life toward the sacred pursuit of poetry. She is still on the journey, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Lindenwood University and organizing open mics and workshops around the city. You can find her wandering her new neighborhood in sunny LA, or on instagram @yessietojessie.
See more of her work in 10.3