Suspended in perfect contention between above and below,
infinite stalks of awareness grow from this human form.
Laughter snaking along the shores: friendship,
like a tap on the shoulder, calls you back home.
But oh so tantalizing this red light made of
star matter calls from beyond the eyelids:
Abandon everything you thought you once were:
the luminous night which stretches on above
like rocky coastline and dull horizon,
the kelp which floats below through cold water
to the edge of forever, settles among rotten logs and silt,
for every fallen city a mark on a withered page
dissolves into the net of time. Into the
wing of a monarch whose chrysalis refuses to open–
rotting instead; black into its gold ringed shell,
lakeshore lapping over itself again and again until
the song is heard from all corners of the cathedral valley:
all that is left of your body is light, and it is going now.
Pure boundless blaze burns your vision newborn;
blinded to the surface of each new awareness,
your emptiness sings over the ridgeline.

Native to Montpelier, Vermont, Havvah Keller studied Written Arts at Bard College and Latin American literature abroad in Mexico and Chile. Her work has appeared in Bard College’s translation and literary anthology Sui Generis, 45th Parallel Literary Magazine, Book of Matches Literary Magazine, and Tethered Literary Journal.