Reflected sunrise
Serpentine gold-orange chains, flickering loosely on the water’s surface
Slip away and twinkle, gently lifting waves, bright fleeting punctuation
Not labyrinthine, like plaited vines, coiled invaders wrapped around trunks of hay-colored winter bark
Waves touch down and stir up clouds which burst and disappear as quickly as fireworks, but silently
Like ashes poured into the sea, blurring edges
The way things look through tears
Snow to dirt, rocks to pebbles and shells, sand to water, sea to sky, sun to earth
Receding from shore are Matryoshka boot prints, each a silvery map, oblong and ever-widening where long-gone visitors crashed through crusted snowdrifts
Leaving nesting entry wounds smoothed by thaws, frozen over and over
Next to them are paw prints the size of a toddler’s outstretched hand
(No dogs in sight today, though wind mimics the way they exhale winter air in sharp bursts)
Our children traced their hands on fabric that endures and on construction paper from which bright colors have leached, brilliant red to light brick, Kelly green to weak pea soup
Their newborn footprints were stamped on hospital paper in blue ink, toes smaller than the blush blue and white-pink periwinkles clustered along the rocky shore
Their faces as they looked at their father when he could hold them in one arm, their perfect heads cupped in the hand that bore his wedding ring
My boots stay atop today’s unyielding ice coating, so my footprints are no different than yours
Which are not here
Just like that day, this day
At the beginning of Spring
When you became not here
But everywhere
Such honorable sadness on this day. We will never forget your loss, our loss, everyone’s loss on this day. He is in our hearts with love — now and forever.
Nothing can describe how this affected me. I feel your sorrow.
Like this one
Beautiful words and photos Stephanie.
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