Archive 501
Vivian Galván García
I am on a quest to reach the sun
By Lya VengerikI am on a quest to reach the sun.
I have been following it for days, chasing that fizzling golden orb down the city streets, up and down rivers.
I look into the sun and it seems supple. The sun’s light filters through the purple thistles. It caresses the wings of the birds above me. The sun’s heat shimmers on the pavement, veiling the view above it in watery ripples. It grazes my cheeks, dances on my closed eyelids as I rest by a tree. It knows I am coming, and whispers in encouragement.
Nights are terrifying.
The sun hides and with it my sense of direction, my orientation within space – I feel the edges of the cosmos creeping in. My chest tightens, my breathing becomes shallow and fast.
Sunrises are a rapture. A deliverance.
The sky turns purple, crickets sing, the world hums in anticipation. Jasmine flowers perfume the air in a welcome. Lean cotton clouds adorn the sky in a soft scarf.
Then the sky turns orange. Heat rises. The bustle in the street makes its rattling waking sounds. Cats dash across rooftops.
Then the sky turns yellow and the sun peaks over the horizon and washes the night away chasing down shadows cleaning out staleness defrosting the crystals of fear within my muscles and the sun is here and I am alive! The light of the sun is on me and I am alive!
I close my eyes and let the light envelop me. I want to curl up in a fetal position and lie within it, absorbing heat until I become a part of its body as much as it is a part of my soul.
Inside the sun is where I will sleep. It is dark in there, and warm, and safe, and it is home. The darkness inside the sun does not scare me because I know the sun is not hiding, but it is all around me.
The notion of home has driven me on this quest. Home is what I grasp for blindly in moments of weakness. I know my home is in the sun. So I follow the sun.
At a market in a small town I meet a farmer and tell him of my quest.
He says he knows the sun like a mother, and he can help.
He invites me to his home.
He tells me he owns the sun.
I ask how that’s possible.
Well, not the original sun, he clarifies, but expressions of it.
He leads me to the back of his house where I find a sweeping orange orchard.
Dots of the brightest orange line the quivering leaves like spots of sunlight on the ocean.
Here it is, he says. He walks over to a tree and plucks an orange and puts it in my hand. Your very own sun.
I stare at the sun in the palm of my hand.
It shines and vibrates with energy. An energy so familiar. It is the energy I feel on my face.
It is bright, like my sun, and orange, and smells the way I expect my sun does – fresh, familiar, nostalgic.
The farmer takes it from my hand and for a minute I feel impossibly cold.
He peels the orange for me, this humble farmer, peeling the sun with his bare calloused hands, the perfume intensifying, and hands me a slice.
Try it.
I take a bite and the juice is sweeter and brighter than any orange I’ve had before.
As I swallow I feel a warmth spreading within, I notice a subtle glow around the edges of my fingers.
Instead of reaching the sun, the sun had reached me, through a messenger.