Light is light is light is light
And everything else is darkness.
The ocean is a sky wounded with stars.
One you can eat, one will eat you,
And one is just like you but not.
Light is light is dying/living/loving.
The ocean is darkness is guessing and winning
And guessing and losing and lost forever.
Still there is guessing and still there is glowing.
If the light is a lure for deathsharp jaws
If the light is only another meeting
With the vast strangeness of deep waters,
It is always light; it is always shining.
It is always the entrance to illumination
To absolute approach, to accepting it all

***

Lightning falls in sand as it must fall somewhere.
It leaves the same sharp monument every time,
A glass pillar map of every turn it made
Not for welcome but for less unwelcome,
An ever forward battle for something more than permission,
To be not only possible but fitting, a benediction.
They are as different as sand grains, and as similar.
The same sharp memory, in different turns.
I’ve felt my narrow pillars shatter to a touch.
I’ve taken blood on corners where I reached
And cursed my dull and fragile fulgurite soul
One day I’ll melt myself to kinder rounded shapes,
But now I thank I my tree root corners
That cling to cooled memories of skyflame heat,
The fire-desperate hope to be welcome, enough.

***

Lillie Franks is a trans author and teacher who lives in Chicago, Illinois with the best cats. You can read her work at places like Always Crashing, Poemeleon, and Drunk Monkeys or follow her on Twitter at @onyxaminedlife. She loves anything that is not the way it should be.