APPARITIONS
The temperature falls with the sun, plummeting arm-in-arm until their elbows rest
on distant hills
and the starry-eyed goddess shivers,
trembles,
lifts up her shadow-dark curved lashes and reveals in her slit-pupil and silver iris
a half-coin moon.
It is in the dark where thoughts expand
gain wings and fly far off to strange parts that they
halt at, only to rise
and depart again,
and to move on and on until sleep lifts them so far and high
that it is almost as if they have hit face-first
the ground
because
either way it is so dark that nothing can be seen.
Sometimes,
from the hollows of the earth,
between the gnarled mud-spit roots that hang from the base of trees,
dreams emerge
and float like ghostly apparitions,
that with blue-purple arms,
lift the windows wide until
they stand open as gaping holes,
and so travel through the membranes of your soul
and into the
hollows
of your mind.
When the sun comes up
and replaces the silver half-coin with one of copper,
the day intensifies,
and the shadows, the darkness, the coolness,
all these things
recede as they are conquered by the sun.
Only remnants stay behind,
places where the darkness is contained,
places like the tubing, the pipes where water trickles,
spiraling down drains,
echoing in sewers,
places like
the cool darkness in your head,
the place behind your shining
silver-copper eyes,
the eyes beneath your
shadow-dark lashes.,
the eyes from which your dark-light soul
is glinting as you interweave
with all things,
as shadows and light come together endlessly and differently,
and so appear like ghostly apparitions,
connecting and so appearing differently and infinitely
everywhere,
with all things,
in all places,
each thing interacting and so expressing
all things and itself
with its burning illumination, casts everything
with all color differently, endlessly.
on distant hills
and the starry-eyed goddess shivers,
trembles,
lifts up her shadow-dark curved lashes and reveals in her slit-pupil and silver iris
a half-coin moon.
It is in the dark where thoughts expand
gain wings and fly far off to strange parts that they
halt at, only to rise
and depart again,
and to move on and on until sleep lifts them so far and high
that it is almost as if they have hit face-first
the ground
because
either way it is so dark that nothing can be seen.
Sometimes,
from the hollows of the earth,
between the gnarled mud-spit roots that hang from the base of trees,
dreams emerge
and float like ghostly apparitions,
that with blue-purple arms,
lift the windows wide until
they stand open as gaping holes,
and so travel through the membranes of your soul
and into the
hollows
of your mind.
When the sun comes up
and replaces the silver half-coin with one of copper,
the day intensifies,
and the shadows, the darkness, the coolness,
all these things
recede as they are conquered by the sun.
Only remnants stay behind,
places where the darkness is contained,
places like the tubing, the pipes where water trickles,
spiraling down drains,
echoing in sewers,
places like
the cool darkness in your head,
the place behind your shining
silver-copper eyes,
the eyes beneath your
shadow-dark lashes.,
the eyes from which your dark-light soul
is glinting as you interweave
with all things,
as shadows and light come together endlessly and differently,
and so appear like ghostly apparitions,
connecting and so appearing differently and infinitely
everywhere,
with all things,
in all places,
each thing interacting and so expressing
all things and itself
with its burning illumination, casts everything
with all color differently, endlessly.
BIO: Elena Botts grew up in Maryland, and currently lives in Northern Virginia. She is still attending school. She likes to run. And write. She’s working on a poetry chapbook with a small press editor. She has been accepted for publication into many literary magazines this past year. These include Tipton Poetry Journal, BSN, Seeding the Snow, Conceit Magazine, and Amulet. She was also accepted into an anthology through a contest.
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