Missed Fires

Really long nights
Set up for grateful days
Feasting on sunlight

Before that sun sets too soon over the ever-unreachable horizon.

He tried to reach it once
Ran after the bolting sun

Tears of goodbye
Streaming down his face

"Don't leave me in this dark.
Don't trap me in the night.
This is a thing I do not deserve.
This is a thing I did not ask for."

But the sun answers to no one.
No man. No woman. No animal.
Sometimes the moon, but only when she is feeling especially generous,
especially kind,
especially willing.

He could tame the sun as much as fingers can scrape a scrap of eggshell from the thick battered bowl
Have you tried?
An eggshell only sticks to itself
Like a magnet
It will run from your soft, sticky fingers.

Much like the egg incident:
Want does not increase success when it comes to the sun.

So he chased her
Through the orange sunset
And into the black of dark

Light pollution did not compare to her fiery roar-

And he wandered
Aimlessly
Lost.

He looked to the moon
Wishing for him to brighten in the same way she had

But he did not tear up the sky.
He did not rip at his eyelids.
The moon did not cast long shadows
short shadows
dancing patterns
piercing sunlight.

He ended in a field
Broad. Dying.

Moonlights weak shadowing
Created a maze on the ground.
A feeble one.

And just when he gave up
And decided, she was gone
Light peaked at a far corner
And the sky lightened.
Barely.

Then great streaming blue - finally.

And the grounds maze felt
Strength once more.

And he cried again
Happy - not tears of goodbye

Unwilling to remember. Dark would come again.

12/28/2014
Riley Welch