*Solenblume
The pond
with its murky waters
no longer breeds life.
Abandoned by civilization
and nature.
The trees encasing it
are rotting.
Poisoned by time.
But one thing remains.
As sun the begins its ascent,
the lotus flowers rise,
The sun climbs higher,
the lotuses glow brighter.
Golden dust begins to flow
out of the flowers,
into the pond.
The sun hits its peak in the sky.
All at once, the flowers bloom,
bursting with gold.
The particles fuse together
to form ribbons that dance and intertwine,
encasing everything they can
in their radiance.
Everything the gold touches,
heals.
And then everything goes out,
like a light bulb.
The gold races back to the waters.
The lotuses close, and sink down
under water,
into dirt.
Until the next day,
when the sun rises up
and the cycle begins again.
Ray Dominguez is a nonbinary, pansexual, and Filipinx Creative Writing major who doesn’t understand iambic pentameter because every syllable sounds just as stressed as they are. In their spare time they like to do cliché writer things like write, feel good about it for a second, and then cry about how much they want to be a better writer. They also like to incorporate at least one facet of their identity in everything they create. Hope you enjoy their work!