Lit

The sun returned this morning.
It lit the dog from within,
yellow rays blowing
out of his rib cage,
throwing light under the edge of the counter.
It polished the kitchen with buttercups and
shattered on the refrigerator door
where the risen Christ figure
flared blue hot with
an orange lemon yellow halo.

When the sun returned this morning,
I swallowed it whole.
It lit me,
streamed honey from my fingertips,
flashing off of the coffee pot
which slammed its lid
on the marmalade glow of the toast.
A grapefruit of uncertain sweetness
flushed coral and,
Guadalupe, bending down
under a thousand radiant sequins,
wondered what had become of Catrina
and her marigolds.

Larisa Harriger is a detective, archeologist, taxonomist, cartographer, cowboy, dancing bear trainer, and occasional janitor to a variety of inherently unstable systems. She holds a charmingly old-fashioned Master of Librarianship degree but couldn’t lay her hands on her copy of the Iliad on a five-dollar bet. You can read her occasional ramblings at shinymagpie.net or follow her on Twitter as @shinymagpie. 

“Lit” was originally published in American Journal of Poetry.