El Lumbroso

That night I was so radiant you could barely see me for my light. Now in the incandescent dawn I am paraded before your helpless eye. The stakes are high enough for me to see my angel cry. Padre Contreras, frail and vulnerable, murmurs why? Listen. The flames’ voice is cracking. Hear them sigh. My flesh imploding in the fire, together we witness it reduce to ashes, together watch it fly. You and I, how we danced ever closer to the flames, to my flesh, to its demise. Your old soul knows I could not die, but your mind is young, cannot yet read the milestones of the sky. Cloistered in my afterglow, shawled in me, you stood in prayer that the light I have become be bestowed upon you. My apparition soars, carried in your dreams. Four centuries in the abyss cannot erase the seal our memories call. I can still embrace, can enter you, breathe my eternity into your soul.