In the Luminous Moment
The foil sheets fold into pieces
like my heart folds into squares
arteries not needed stop pumping blood,
arteries needed see no difference
in the rhythm of my heart.
The jay sings outside my window,
it is 6am and there is a glimpse of light
life becoming visible after mother darkness
leaves us alone with shadows.
Life – that is the word of the day,
blood flowing through my veins,
while wine fills my stomach while
tears soak a shirt – life
the inevitable stage in which we stop
a moment to breathe and remember
that we are not blind to the sun
but we are blind to us, to the us
that makes us human. Your skin
becomes the sheets that cover me
from the Nagual and then it disappeared
in a stormy night when the apocalypse came.
Now, I have no sheet to cover my tears,
wine remains the constant in this life
wine the favorite drink of the gods.
Olympus has fallen for shortage of wine –
the news read.
The news doesn’t see that the tulips have been
eradicated by our obsession with Instagram.
Instagram is the lens in which they see
a life – a life that is not what it is
and I remain with wine glass in hand
remembering the love I once felt from
the trees in my grandfather’s ranch.
The love that will never come back
until water stops running underneath
my feet in this red-blooded earth.
Maria Duarte is a poet and writer who received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside--Palm Desert. She has published poems in Verdad Magazine from Long Beach City College and in the anthology The Good Grief Journal: A Journey Toward Healing. She is currently the poetry editor for Kelp Journal.
