Liminal Clarity

Chilled sock-less toes and delicately aching bones
Piles of dappled clouds above like
Heather gosling feathers
Seeking in vain to insulate the colorless sky, premature, exposed.
A fleeting silent pause––
The last summer has ended.

Sense of moment: shimmering gossamer in front of your nose
With all the splendor the world has ever mustered
Even that prickling pain in my chest
(cousin to tenderness) has its place.
I could reach out, caress this thing with a fingertip,
To disturb it would be impossible to bear.

Intangible, ethereal
An intersection of impossible vitality and some horrible romantic ideal.
Like the first exposure of chaste skin, ribs fluttering close to surface,
An act of quietly subversive intimacy,
Or a crimson flash of cardinal’s wing and
The rustle of leaves swelling and receding like rolling waves and
Pale sky. Things will never be the same, and I’m glad.

Celestial rays beam through fissures in the marbled sky,
Unveiling layers of mountain and valley.
Silhouettes, horizon.
The autumn underbrush knits together, one patchwork quilt of
Arboreal color blanketing the rolling hills.
Alive and uncultivated and unrelenting,
Rise and fall –– inhale and exhale.
This morning, our car weaves through each breath: infinite.

Laine Betanzos is a poet and high school senior at The Hockaday School in Dallas, Texas. She looks forward to pursuing studies in English, Creative Writing, and Philosophy at the university level next fall.