April 6, 2022 | Poem by Ava Loomar | Illustration by Allessandra Inzinna
The glass bottle on silica sand.
One substance, suspended in time.
The bottle, its beginning; the sand, its end.
And we, three, laid upon thousands of past wine nights.
The sky starless and polluted by Hollywood’s guitar.
We, three, birthed by this beach.
Her hair, dark, silky, was a twilight swell.
His, a breaking wave, rebelled against black cotton,
aching for the moon’s kiss.
But above, the moon only observed,
a voyeur to our vitality:
silver silica sand in cracked hourglass,
flickering ner nishma on black veneer.
Only a sip, a laugh, a head rested on loved shoulder
needed to bow her light to mourning.
We, three, waved her goodbye. Reclined.
Her light refracted unto the calendar.
It could be any night –
dreams spoken, paths laid;
love, just a salty breeze –
mah nishtana halaila hazeh?
Every question has an answer;
this, a gamble made and lost,
bitter price exacted in change.
Don’t you hear it?
The season’s treason sounds the same as a prayer.
When winter comes,
only One will seal the moment in amber.
It’s a gold cocoon, a heart-shaped locket
without a key that somehow –
with Grief and Relief –
I never fail to open.
Inside: glass is glass and never shatters;
the moon, a candle that never goes out.
Within the forever night on the beach of life and death,
A butterfly skates on a salty breeze.
It flutters,
but never wakes.