Home is Where the Sun Sets

Robyn Claypool

In late October, a pacific sun fades to the west, where you cannot see it fall to its slumber, blanketed in mists, wet concrete, raindrops grazing tall panes of glass.

Here, the prairie sky is dry and clear, concrete buildings so low that I can watch the sun slip away slow and steady over the earth.

Here, when the leaves turn to embers, no wet drops fall from the heavens. I find myself worried, I find myself weary. This is the time I usually feel watered, after the long dehydration of a scorching summer.

Out there, on the coast, I found solace in the dark wet shadows of my home. Now that I’ve left them behind, somehow I know they will always call to me.

Out there, were ocean tides and the faces of my friends. I see them here here only in dim corners, or in puddle reflections that remind me of those quiet coastal silver skies.

I could almost dive into them and go right back to the canopies of emerald pines rising from the salt of the mountainous earth.

But I don’t. I can’t, I am here now and a bright prairie sun sets itself inside my chest. My snowy eyes reflect the vast blue skies over miles of alfalfa and canola fields, lakes dreamy and slow. They make a nest inside my bones, blood and soul.

I know home is what you make of it although I often wonder where I am truly meant to be.

At any moment in time? In any particular place? I know now that it must be here, as this is where I am. Beneath this sky. Watching this sun. How can that be wrong?

Whatever It Was It Was And It Is Not It Now

Greg Orrē

“Before the Storm” depicts those strange moments of silence and tranquillity before a disaster.

Living in the 21st century has all kinds of surprises everyday. Media is filled with natural disasters, wars, and etc. I think we are all living those moments before a storm, constantly worried that this silence is not right and something awful is going to happen, anxiety on top of anxiety.

Before the Storm by NARGES PORSANDEKHIAL

Photocollage on paper