Where The Light Begins Again

By Tamanna Bangthai

You wake up one day; the sun so large

it bursts on your face, and you emerge

scattered, scathing, born of the blaze.

The last thing you remember is light,

its motherly arms folding around you

like you were the one who needed saving.

You see your story drifting away, ejected

like radioactive debris from a dying supernova.

Your eyes turn liquid, like the oceans

that once kept you afloat. Your body splinters,

exploding, pulling away from its own fragments.

Your heartbeat pounds in your ears

like a firefly trapped in glass, and you remember

the first time the larger piece of a wishbone

fell into your lap, you were a light particle,

a happy child bouncing on a trampoline,

radiating joy in waves and circles.

You were always too hopeful, too curious,

too late to a party that never paused for you

while the universe kept expanding-

wider, colder, farther away,

until it slipped beyond the wings you carved out of your hands,

till even your skin felt distant,

and the room around you shrank

like a memory inside an old photograph.

You watch the edges of creation fade 

while you keep chasing what was never yours

and you lie there in the brightness, waiting

until the light folds you into itself,

until you remember you were born from it

and you breathe again, scattered and whole,

as if waking to another day,

the same sun, the same burning face,

beginning right where you ended.

By Tamanna Bangthai