I have always relied on stories to make sense of the world. Coyote and Fox taught me about being curious and the dangers of taking a joke too far. Moses taught me that we all capable of changing the world. The legends of my ancestors, who worked this piece of land before me, taught me how to keep learning and listening.
I wrote this western fable to make sense of an ending. An ending that I didn't see coming and that left me in the dark for a very long night. I started building fires and polishing my own skin until the light came through once again. We don't always appreciate the daylight but we notice the cold that comes with the sundown.
She came up over the horizon after they had been saddling in the dark with frozen fingertips and no sense of direction. Each straw lid lifted up to greet her and one cowboy slid to a stop like he had never seen a sunrise before. She turned the dark blue inside him into every shade of Indian corn. He vowed then and there that he would rather burn his skin to charred leather and go pale blue with blindness, than to ever turn away from her warmth again.
She followed him, chasing away monsters and lighting the way, no matter the direction of the wind. He believed she would always be there and in that way, he had been blinded. The stronger his complacent nature grew, the more relentless her pursuit became until at last she was right overhead, harsh in her intensity and he lay beneath sweating, having shed all his layers and pride to the ground in honor of her.
For a time they were in a state of worship, one for the other. Then the cowboy began to pray for rain, or at the very least cloud cover, so that he could more easily tolerate the glare and heat coming from her presence. She, of course, acquiesced. She hid behind clouds and lowered herself towards the mountains. Through the fog, she could see that the cowboy was happy once again. Lower and lower she sank until she was afraid that she may slip over the edge and be gone for good. In an effort to reclaim what they had lost, she colored the sky above him in every color of Indian corn. The oranges and golds, amber and fuchias caught his gaze but instead of rising up, he reached for his sweater and began piling on all his old layers, one at a time.
“I thought you would move mountains for me.” She whispered to him in her last glowing moment.
“I thought the day would never end.” The cowboy said to no one in particular at all.