Longyearbyen Interim

By Cally O’Brien

The plane to leave the self behind; the dark to find the self anew. Last dusk. Muffling snow, glossy ice. Stars peering around clouds that we’d call cotton, if cotton belonged here; we’d say wool, if sheep belonged here; so call them vapor, absent room for lies.

Stillness but for wisps and walls of ice, black but for the winter ptarmigan skittering across the street. Time lies about being infinite, offers a window. Slip out, pass through, disappear.

Space to craft in silence, under streetlights, the aurora at solar maximum. Seductive long weeks in the absence of the shallow sliver of the electromagnetic bands that we can see. The interminable space before that sunrise, the suspense of a next cloudy breath.

It will soon sublimate into summer, fading before eyes rubbed fresh.

This moment can suffice.

Cally O’Brien came to Svalbard with 45 minutes of forethought, and decided against leaving before finishing a manuscript on recovery from brain injury.