La Luz
written by: Gabo Alvarado-Lieber
Deep in everyone’s soul there is a library,
a pit containing titleless collections resting on obsidian
racks stacked in honeycomb tunnels,
reachable only via a rickety ladder.
In one section of that vast archive
there is a wall of material devoted to labyrinths,
and on one shelf a book
that contains countless variations on a single anecdote.
Yet, the premise is always the same: a person
descends the ladder in search of answers.
One Christmas, I decided to descend the creaky ladder
hoping for even the dimmest light to shine and reveal
the right hexagonal channel, an impossible feat
without the blue shroud of the holidays consuming me.
Bright shards tickle my bulbous irises,
marking the spot to step off onto the slick stone
of the indicated passageway. I grab
at a shelf to steady my footing, but slip
and slice my hand on the jagged edge of that black
opaque material to land face down
on the cold coal colored surface.
I see my eyes and scrunched up nose in the abyss
of the floor, which could easily have been confused for muck
were it not for the hard cold plane pressing
every single pressure point on my frigid body.
The only warmth I felt was from the blood trickling out
of my hand and the flashing specks still dancing in my retinas
that led me down this treacherous path.
I reluctantly reach out with my good hand,
unsure about placing my faith in whatever I may grasp next,
only to touch something familiar, leaving me bewildered,
for it felt like the smooth cracked rails of the ladder
I descended moments earlier.
Peeling my frozen face off the ice cold floor,
I find myself clutching on to the leg of a desk
with an open hutch at the top summoning me to stand up
and see what it contained.
I find paper and a quill pen
along with a lit clay oil lamp.
But no ink nor any pigmented substance
except for the blotch of blood on the table top
where my bad hand had been resting.
I dip the pen in the red puddle,
proceed to quickly capture the story of my labyrinth
under the light of my ancestors.
Now able to make out the rungs of the ladder
with the eternal flame flickering like fireflies up the beast’s esophagus
I am inspired to inscribe a title on my hastily written volume:
“The Light”
