Aurorra

She walks out of the redwoods with frost in her braids,
birch runes stitched along her sleeves,
a song of light in the eyes of night.

The dogs stop their arguing. Snakes forget their names.
Even the moon leans down, a pale loaf cooling on the sill.
She lifts her star-warmed shawl and screams—
not anger, but a white-hot ribbon of sound,
a river cracking its own glass to run again.

“Istina,” she cries—truth—
and windows fog with sudden honesty.
The stove admits its hunger, the bread its salt,
boots confess to every road they’ve stolen from.
Icons on the wall stand at attention, gold trembling like leaves.

“Dukh,” she cries—spirit—
and the air grows a spine.
Crows become scripture on the wires,
snow takes a vow of brightness,
knees find the floor without shame.

Her voice rings the bones of the wooden house,
rings the well, the iron bucket, the coin at its bottom,
rings the far field where wolves kneel as if remembering
the first language for warmth.

Truth is not a courtroom, she says between breaths;
it is a hot samovar—pour, sip, burn, heal.
Spirit is not a ladder; it is the wind that refuses
to leave you where it found you.

Again she screams, and the Volga in our blood thaws.
Names return with their lost edges.
Promises wash their faces and come inside.
We feel the small, precise hinge of the heart
open like a gate in spring.

When she is finished, the silence is clear enough to read by.
She ties her voice back under her tongue
like a knife of light, and walks toward the next village,
footprints filling with stars as fast as she makes them.

Behind her, we practice saying yes without lying.
Behind her, the night remembers it is alive.
And somewhere deep, where the soul keeps its winter pantry,
a jar labeled Fear turns to honey.

• Portrait