When the freckles of the sun flare, I think of silt.

Beauty, even on your own skin, your own sky, scorches in surprise.

I sleep right through the northern lights tripping south on a night when people run mad to waterfalls and blueberry fields. I wake up with the word silt in my mouth and for the next two days, I want to put it somewhere, tell someone, ‘the most beautiful word in the world is silt.’ All they want to talk about is light.

“The last time this happened,” a nei…