New Year’s Day

COWETA PROSE & POETRY

Written by SAMANTHA SASTRE

When Samantha Sastre is not outside hiking, camping or kayaking, you can find her at her little blue house in Newnan with a delightfully fluffy cat. There, she is likely cooking while enjoying an Old Fashioned. She wishes she wrote more often.

In the middle, at the beginning,
somewhere between the simmer and the
frozen (in time)...it was summer
again at midnight, all warmth
and skin, then the depths
of winter as you watched me go,
but we started … yes, love, we
began. It’s 24 degrees and falling
and I’m still falling
and you always catch
my eye, like the plastic glasses
caught champagne while smoke
drifted up like a prayer;
we were dizzy with it,
enraptured and overflowing,
fireworks bursting – all light
and heat and reminders
to live in the moment,
to cherish the time,
to savor and burst
and renew.

NCM