Aliyah Cotton
A Deliberate Light
It’s early
and I’ve gone outside to be found
by a dawn that blooms
like a shadow living upside down.
No other genesis will do,
not the bromes dressed
in cool diamond dew,
nor the gossip of wrens
across the rising blue horizon.
I want to be found
by a deliberate light,
a light that bleeds
into sight until reflected
by my own stagnant eyes.
I want my gaze to roam
and be scattered
like the ashes of someone loved.
I stand on my tippy toes
and wonder what I’ll find there
when out walks Eva,
my lemon-honey, my sugar-plum,
fervent and sweet.
You unfurl yourself
toward the sun. You bask.
You live gleaming in this world
without ceasing.
Aliyah Cotton reads “A Deliberate Light”
Aliyah Cotton