Yellow Mama E zine

The Ruby & the Emerald

 

by Kevin Burke 

 

 

Twenty years? Or 100 years?

 

Long enough for most people to forget the names they once called themselves.

 

But some friendships do not belong entirely to this lifetime.

 

You and I have walked through enough fire to know that it does not always destroy. Sometimes it reveals what was forged beneath the flesh.

 

We have laughed in places where lesser spirits would have broken. We have stood quietly in the ruins of things we once thought would last forever. We learned the language of silence, the geometry of survival, and the strange mathematics of two souls recognizing each other without needing to explain why.

 

So when you say, live fiercely, love deeply, laugh without apology, and let no one dim your light . . .

 

I understand.

 

Because we have spent twenty years carrying our own lanterns through very dark country.

 

And perhaps that is what we have always been to one another:

 

Two old spirits who somehow found each other again in this lifetime.

 

Forged separately by the war of life.

 

Tempered by loss.

 

Sharpened by experience.

 

Still laughing.

 

Still standing.

 

Still dangerous.

 

And somewhere beyond the reach of ordinary understanding, the universe probably remembers why it put us in the same chapter.

 

Keep your light burning, my ancient friend.

 

I'll keep watch over the shadows.

 

We've survived too much together to become ordinary now.

 

 

         Kevin Burke is a 44-year-old American poet whose work inhabits the threshold where philosophy, mysticism, and the addiction of the human anatomy of consciousness converge. Qualitatively assessed as four standard deviations above the norm, he approaches existence as a living manuscript—one written simultaneously in silence, paradox, and revelation. Every question is an invitation to descend further into the architecture beneath reality.

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        Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.