By Yash Seyedbagheri
PROMPT — I am grateful for ...
I am grateful for the stillness of evening, when lights snake through the pines and over the hills, offering welcome, continuity, and hope. They flicker, a torchlight parade, playfully darting in and out, and then in again, as if to retreat from the world into their own dream. Don’t forget the puddles in the rain, the beauty of rings mingling with each other, swirling, dancing, the richness of a country road, the crickets calling at night, Venus flickering on clear nights over velvet skies, winking, smiling. I’m grateful for the wonderment watching the evening skies, the pale blue, the elegance of pinks, the mélange of the two in a somnolent symphony that beckons one to live, to dream, to surrender worries to the day behind them. I’m truly grateful for the beauty of the moon and her luminosity on the ponds, on the country roads around me, the shadows, shimmering, sadness and jocundity all mingled into one, like Debussy, and I’m grateful for Debussy, for classical music, for the tinkling of a prelude, the richness of a Tchaikovsky waltz calling me to dance without shame. So many things, but where can one stop?
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others.