APOLOGY TO LIGHT
By Jennifer Chapis
Moon sitting cross-legged on the lily pad
looks like a hand holding a baby toad.
I'm scared because I know better:
the path to happiness cannot literally be a path,
more like swimming blindfolded
through a once-familiar pond
while mustangs wade by,
shifting how we see ourselves.
You asked me to leave you.
If I had to say why I refused
to go in alone:
you saw the me inside me.
We don't remember, but we chose our lives.
Radiance gallops backward
like your own breath
on the window's other side.