It's Still Life

A Bit of Sriracha Red
 

I.
My strongest memory from kindergarten
is not what I learned, although I must’ve
learned something, but rather it’s
the iron grills in the wooden floors

that blew hot air from the belly
of that hell-shackled furnace hidden
in the school basement. I’d stand
there on the iron grill, wearing red

patent leather shoes and a full-as-
a-1950s-skirt-could-possibly-be,
gathered and pleated and blowing
into a circular billowing dream.

And I reckon it’s the same thing
with a sunrise — the sky lifting
its billowing skirt and showing-off
its shocking sriracha’ly-red shoes.
 

II.
There’s coffee on the table,
a spiderweb catching dawn,
morning’s blue tints the window,
and the sky is alive
with a Sriracha hue.
 

III.
Earth turned and faced the sun, like
lovers turn into each other’s arms –
morning hung light with clouds deep
as thickest sleep, while the horizon
ruptured into a silver fleck,
like a trout I once saw, it spun that
same silver flash — coaxed by light
and slipped away into my shadow.
But this sunrise had no Sriracha-ruby hue,
no awe-struck dawn; just an honest, modest
start of day, bright rightness in the air.
 

Miz Quickly’s image prompt (the chilli pepper sauce photo) and Poetic Bloomings “Aubade” form – a celebration of dawn