My wits and my body are failing.

Wearied, searching for centuries

for a gate made of bronze, rusted green.

Hidden from sight in the daylight.

Have I found it at last in this desert of all places?

Godforsaken dunes are the last place I’d look.

Yet here I am, reaching out sweaty hands,

and through the air, I feel metal and concrete.

Appearing like a monolith from a mirage,

a gateway materializes in the sand

to transport me back to a land I loved and abandoned.

Disbelief, anticipation

my heart slams like a tempest;

like the storm that first washed me through the portal

into a forgotten, enchanted land so many centuries ago.

Spluttering and young and desperate to grasp something solid.

Hesitation.

Dare I pass through this gate, feel its unrestrained power?

What if I forget why I came? Overcome by the shadows through the archway.

Or worse yet, what if my body remembers that searing pain 

of leaving when my soul was broken in two?

I brace -

these centuries have been a long enough preparation.

I run through that threshold, proud and imposing

I’m falling, I’m landing, I’m thrashing in water

as day is transposed into night.

Above in a crepuscular sky,

stars shine in the calm velvet twilight.

I wade

out of a creek, from the smell and the sound of it

and remember where I am, why I’m here.

The land around me, so familiar.

My elbows are scraped, my body is dripping,

my eyes adjust to the starlight.

I begin

walking through a landscape unaltered by time.

I shake the water and fear from my brain

and I head towards The Elmway. 

Oh, the fondness I felt

the first time these trees beheld me,

and oh, the secrets we shared.

But their branches are old now and brittle,

their leaves are as haunted as I am.

They have grown too weak to shoulder my heartbreak;

they no longer shield what I seek.

So I rove to the glade, and I search through the grass

tall and blinking with fireflies whose synchronized dance

shows their kindness as they help to illuminate my search. 

Every blade is inspected, every rock overturned.

Still, I don’t find what I seek. 

I head to a clearing, spot a labyrinthian building,

stride down its halls, and look through its doorways.

“Not here, not here,” its shadows seem to tell me. 

Hours have passed, and still I am wandering.

I find other structures and climb up their rooftops

and from one such vantage up high, 

I spot a building below, across the moor far beyond,

so ancient, the river has forgotten its name. 

I trip down the bricked stairwell of my lookout,

run through the moor and approach the old building, 

stop to a halt on the threshold, 

shove open the splintering door.

The air I've disturbed swirls through the room,

rustles a book on a rickety stand,

sends dust up and around me.

I’m inside a library, cold and lost and forgotten.

Dust on large chairs, books with torn pages,

towering shelves stand lining the walls.

Memories of light linger in the fireplace 

like sooty portraits on the hearth.

I know it is here what I’m seeking. I feel its energy pulsing -

it’s as real as the dust in my eyes. 

I’ll climb every bookshelf and search ‘till I find it,

waiting for me like a child.

Precious and rough, uncut like a sapphire,

this missing piece of my soul.

It was stolen from me by the land itself,

carried here on the waves of time.

Collateral to ensure I’d someday return and

do everything in my power to retrieve it.

And so I’ve returned, and here it has lived, sitting high on a shelf.

In a forgotten library, keeping company with books, 

hiding,  glittering, and smug as an ember.

I climb up a rolling ladder to reach it, grip it, solid and gentle, 

wipe away grime and fight against tears,

and in an instant its power  pulsing through me, 

sparking like metal, starting a flame.

My soul, united at last and complete, sputters to life like an engine,

excited and dancing like fireflies in the meadow,

lightning and fire, hot but not painful,

a supernova under my skin.

And then, just as quickly, I see nothing at all.

My heart is racing, the room is quiet, the building is still, but the ladder is shaking.

I lose my grip, and I’m falling, falling, falling

into daylight, bright and blinding.

And once again, I am in the desert

standing under a rusting bronze archway.

Beckoned beyond, pushed through the portal

I’m dazed and confused and coughing up sand,

leaning against metal and concrete.

Breathing, breathing, taking stock all around me

I feel all, everything - humanity, mortality, eternity restored, a sapphire glow in my eyes.

The light that rekindled inside me still burns; it will never be stolen again.

Through failure, through pain, my despair through the ages,

the empty disappointment of loss.

Through the charting of courses that all led to nothing,

the exhaustion of seeking, not finding. 

Through dunes in the desert, a trip through a portal, 

I lived, I’m alive, I am whole, and I’ve found it, 

that glittering piece of my soul.

I'm reverent, I’m grateful, though the sun beats upon me, 

and I find that the journey was worth it.

Bio

Alyssa is a biologist by training, and currently majoring in Studio Art at SBCC. She enjoys trying new hobbies, especially anything artsy or crafty. When she's not at the beach, she can be found in her natural habitat (a coffee shop) reading classic literature and writing poetry.