For you

I woke slowly though with an acute awareness of sensation. I could feel something in the room. My eyes remained shut but my limbs brought movement to the body, acceptance of the wakefulness. My mind began to process. What else was in the room with me? It wasn’t my lover nor my dog, both beings woven so deeply into the fabric that blanketed me, to notice them would be to notice breathing. This was something new.

I was taking too long. The horse, on the other side of the house, through the evergreens, across the street and into the field, neighed. And then neighed again. He was doing it for me, that I was sure. He had heard me stir and said “Now is the time." But on his third neigh I lifted my head and knew exactly what it was, of course — it was the light. In the windowless corner of the room where my fig tree sat there was a decidedly pink square of light on the wall just above it. This new presence in the room made no attempt to hide itself — it shone over a hill, beyond the ranch, across the highway, passing through the trees, through the glass, living, breathing, moving on my far bedroom wall. It was light that woke me.

From that moment I sat up. I got out of bed, to the chair for clothes, down the hall, and toward the front door. Slipping into slippers much too big to be my own, I walked down the steps and into the driveway before I began to jog to the road. It was then the horse saw me — the one who always sees me. The one whose eyes I meet when I absentmindedly turn in the garden. We locked eyes and I thanked him for telling me about the light. “Good morning, horse,” I said.

The cold crept into my legs, the pink reflecting off the deep brown skin in such a way that I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the combination. But then I looked up, and walked toward the light. The pink warning square was hardly representative of what was in the sky, one color of thousands. At first it was violent — orange and purple and gold shooting past clouds, over hills, into heavens. It was a neon fuchsia and maroon all at once, it was resistance to its final hurrah, it was the insistence of power and show. I nearly turned away.

Instead I moved closer, craning my neck around power lines and standing on a cattle gate to get higher, nearer. It then became creams, soft blues and pinks, mauves, ambers, and corals. One bled into the next and they all existed together, reaching for the outer regions of where a sunrise could live, spiraling its colored tentacles into an eastern blue sky primly ready for the day ahead. I stood still, begging it not to leave though it always does. I tried to hold it, to encapsulate it. But instead it moved downstream in time with the low waters, ambling west without a goodbye. I could reach for more, I could force the colors, but I turned my back.

And there was the horse, eyes locking with mine. “See?” he said, before putting his mouth down to the grass. I walked toward him and said thank you again. “Good morning, sir,” I said, but he gave me the faintest feeling that I was interrupting his breakfast.