Prisms

Bending Light on Rotation

For

Edith Bow

---

It's hard to imagine a room you enter and don't command

simply by existing in it.

♤

You gave me a hug when we met,

in your embrace the air slowed as light struck crystal

and in our prism rainbows shattered as we shined through the blinding grief

encroaching on our brilliance.

For a moment, we were okay.

Neither of us was okay,

but we put on our armor because that's who we are.

We didn't know her like they did.

It was our job to be among the strong ones,

we did our job well.

You thanked me for taking care of him,

for seeing the damages and refusing to let them exist untested despite the impossible distance between us.

I thanked you for taking care of him,

for leaving your entire world behind to save the life

of a man we both loved in our own ways.

He would have died without you.

I don't have to tell you that.

♤

I know you're still tired,

more tired than anyone should have to be.

I know you want to sleep.

If I were a better person we would talk more

but I'm so trapped by the familiarity of

what surrounded me when I escaped.

I'm so afraid to let anything else in.

Change is anathema and I despise myself for it.

But somehow you love me,

you watch out for me,

we watch out for each other through the silence.

From you I borrow passion to see the world as

something other than

muted and gray,

to continue being the prism people expect from me,

to bend light and shatter rainbows,

to refuse settling for survival.

For you, I'll thrive,

because you saw me in ways no one else could.

♤

May this rotation around the sun reward you for surviving the last.

You deserve

everything

beautiful

and so much more.

The world spins at an angle

because we are the fault in its axis,

allowing it to bend toward the light

and shatter rainbows.

I love you.