Aurora

In the absolute shadow that drenched the trees, drooped in between the mildewed shingles of the roof, swamped the roots of the sprouting green grass, and soaked the simple pasture came a succulent rosy glow.
The sickly black syrup thinned and dried like the starvation-triggered saliva in a beggar’s mouth—that crusty, barren morning greed for a thousand drops of cool water to pool against your cheeks and sweetly kiss your tongue until the morning dew finds itself breathing on the meadow. Millions upon millions of tears swayed together in the early air as they neared the dulled and glad blades of grass. Some droplets disintegrated on their way down, and others found themselves nestled in the feathers and feet of the morning thrush that strokes the chilled breath that collects over the tender hills, the elderly roofs, and the meandering buck fence so clearly meant to extend linearly along the landscape.
Amorphous teardrops of soft pink, orange, and red kept bleeding through the thick blackness that drowned the hue of the day and the melody of the thrush. The blushing sky sang colorful tones across the meadow until it was refreshed and painted anew. The void—the absence of color and light—was temporarily dyed with song.

The light tune made its way into the Farmer’s home. Through the trees, under the doors, within the fibers of the carpet, the song chiseled away the darkness that dried in the air over night. Entering the Famer’s ear and tugging on the Farmer’s delicate and gray eyelashes, the song slowly lulled and roused the sleeping Farmer until he saw the coloring song. He was glad to see color and luster swirling and cascading through his pupils and drifting off into his nerves and beating blood vessels to flood the body with a sensational waltz. With a single breath, the Farmer held the air in his lungs until the ripe oxygen diffused and fizzled out and blended with the fresh color of the morning. And with that, the Farmer could sing the morning song.

With giving, we receive
The wings of an angel
To give to the broken, the lonely, the beloved.
To Aurora, my beautiful, Aurora.

With a wash of sunlight, we find shade
In the valley, the meadow, the ranges
Of melodies I have been granted to sing
To Aurora, my song, Aurora.

With holy matrimony we connect
Our lights of living in an embrace
And I give my life
To Aurora, my life, Aurora.

With my arms we grasp the love
We breathe in the sunlight and the shade
Of the grand sycamore tree planted
To Aurora, my nature, Aurora

With the song of the morning thrush we twirl
To the chirping and wistful wings
Of the grace I have dedicated my life
To Aurora, my Aurora, Aurora.

The melody of the Farmer’s song let everything fall into place. Autumn leaves arranged themselves into pristine piles, raindrops obediently gathered at the tips of leaves like the organic milk of a mother’s breast forming at the tender nipple. The pasture had effortlessly made itself home to the Farmer.
With everything in its right place, the Farmer got out of bed and stood in the middle of his bedroom, feeling the rustled and scattered dust slightly stagnant in the suspended air around him. Feelings and memories and color rushed to him and it all came back. The life, he wondered, with Aurora. What would it have been? How would he have been? At the time, the Farmer was transfixed by fear. The world of his had been painted black, and he was overjoyed that he got to see such luscious color on the pasture every single day of his agricultural life.
It took a considerable amount of time for the Farmer to understand that darkness was not entirely the absence of color—it was the sealer, the covering of color. And what covers can always be scraped away by such sharp, beaming, thriving rays of incredible, bursting light. Emotions bubbling, crippling, scintillating deep within the dark and twisted bowels could explode from the fathomless layers of tissue and blood and spray paint the walls with something so visceral and organic that love for oneself and for another is utterly distant and trite. Uncontrollable feeling gulped down the Farmer to boil and shred him in a stomach acid so potent he would have nothing to crave anymore.

The Farmer was so far beyond embroiled in a fusion of emotion that there was almost nothing to feel except feeling. Real, instinctual, gut-deep feelings only a disgustingly violent bear would thrive on when it shreds, pulls, scratches, rips, and hacks a being to a true, final, mortal death.
Like slitting the throat of the guilty pig. Like stabbing the sacrificial goat in the tempestuous light of the Lord. Like sinking your fingertips, nails, fingers, knuckles, palms, wrists, arms, into boiling, sweaty blood jetting and spurting out of the sacks of flesh that once held gracious life.
The Farmer wanted to stab the livestock, to rob the beggar, to trash and pillage the home he built and filled with color and light for Aurora. For Aurora. For Aurora. For Aurora.
It was all for Aurora. To feel and breathe a gust of happiness and live the bucolic life he followed through the bleeding snow of the old time winters. To chase the wind and the sunset like the pack of wolves that thrived on instinct and a starvation for untamed, primal thrusts of passion. The song of the morning thrush and the grimy, moist panting of the wolves seeped into the sweaty, sultry emotion that was swelling inside the Farmer’s intestines, clamoring to burst and spit into the breathing, grunting, animal that was the sickly green grass the wretched looming trees that hung their branches in his face and scratched his skin to bleed onto the stained dirt that has been walked on by animals driven by a clap beat clap beat of the thudding heart to push forward to live driven by chemicals that when combined thrive and burst into color unseen by the human eye to shred apart the senses and make the organism that is the human body rip apart into pieces that sail down these paths that never have an ending when Death is so near to grasp the Farmer and slice through the clap beat clap beat until the color fades, the diffusion of light into his blood is wretchedly still, and the stars cannot kiss the darkness of the sky.

To the Farmer, Aurora was nothing more than a lipless star caught in the night sky that was stretched to fit his field of vision. A passion that fanned no flames to burn his pasture or clutch his hand and lead him to a heavenly home.
Aurora was the melody of a siren, of a devilish tune meant to lure blood out of the vein. A morning thrush aged and possessed by wicked spirits to prick the Farmer with the thorn of a rose.
The thorn of a ray of rose colored light in the sky, shimmering through the muddy shadow that drips and glooms over the meadow each night at the recession of the sunlight.

The Farmer got back into bed, clutching the sheets and blanket ever so tightly with his old, overworked fingers. With the slow descent of his eyelids, the surge of color that had awoken his world with the shake and pulse of a beating heart was swamped by black ooze.
The shadow swelled upon the land like the noxious juices of the poison, forbidden berry on the bushes that Aurora had knowingly eaten from.
And with such life, the Farmer’s soul was tied to a burning pyre that gave heat to the mourning thrush, a connecting light to the stars, and a drop of blood to the nocturnal gloaming we drift upon with each clap beat clap beat of the pounding red flesh deep inside our colorless chests.