Apogalacteum

Apogalacteum

Lost in the sunrise
I never noticed
how morning dew tastes
like wet stones
or how pistachios open
with playful puffs of air.

I never recalled
the peppery stubble
of my husband's beard
the thin papery dryness
of his hands
how his pulse throbbed
above his clavicle.

I didn't mark
the flash of sunlight on water
the elderberries blue-black ripening
in the bushes
the dead heron's carcass
in the abandoned rowboat.

There is no sunrise
at the apogalacteum
only darkness and cosmic silence
and more time than you need
to notice
everything.

25 lines

Written for:

ID: 333655   (Rated: 13+) The Writer's Cramp  Write the best story or poem in 24 hours or less and win 10,000 GPs! by Sophy

Author's Note:

The day's prompt was "Lost in the sunrise, I never noticed....". Today's newspaper carried a story about the National Spelling Bee. Last year's loser fumbled on the word "apogalacteum"....the point at which a celestial body is farthest away from the Milky Way. It was too delicious a word not to use in a poem. I also used imagery from the Death card of Joanna Powell Colbert's GaianTarot.

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