All Afterglow

All Afterglow by Michael R. Burch Something remarkable, perhaps ... the color of her eyes ... though I forget the color of her eyes ... perhaps her hair the way it blew about ... I do not know just what it was about her that has kept her thought lodged deep in mine ... unmelted snow that lasted till July would be less rare, clasped in some frozen cavern where the wind sculpts bright grotesqueries, ignoring springs’ and summers’ higher laws ... there thawing slow and strange by strange degrees, one tick beyond the freezing point which keeps all things the same ... till what remains is fragile and unlike the world above, where melted snows and rains form rivulets that, inundate with sun, evaporate, and in life’s cyclic stream remake the world again ... I do not know that we can be remade—all afterglow. [Note: “inundate with snow” is not a typo.]