Student Choice Award

Winner of August 2010 Contest

STORMLIGHT by Mercedes M. Yardley

The last time that I saw her
it was noonlight.
It lit her hair
her smile
the backs of her knees
under her school uniform.
We’d meet later, she had said.
We’d go to a movie,
maybe a walk.
Her knee socks refracted light
and gave off rainbows.

Her father came for me
at nightlight.
He threw me against the side of the house
and demanded to know
where his daughter was.
The stars glittered in his beard,
the Milky Way ran through his hair.
His fingers grabbed my collar.
They started to shake when I said
that I hadn’t seen her,
that she had never shown,
that I had waited by our tree until the light
went afternoon, dusk, evening.
I had felt my way home in the dark.

They found her body in morninglight.
Her hair ran red,
shoes and fingernails were missing.
Her white socks were pulled down,
pink under the dim glow of sun.
He had stolen bits of her and left pieces of him;
isn’t that the way it always goes.

They buried her in stormlight.
Clouds and stillness,
the air heavy until the rain dripped
in weak release.
The light is good to her,
tender in its melancholy.
It grays out
the flowers
the earth
the shovels
until the world in its infinite kindness
chooses to go blind.

___________________

For entries of previous months’ winners, visit our Student Choice Contest Winner’s Archive