ָיָה | Chayah — The Hollyridge Trail

Three sunrises ago I left on a solitary journey across Hollyridge Trail, hauling a heavy load of a million thoughts, all of them racing to find some reason. 

Moving my feet across ancient clay soil, I discovered red, gray, and black rock formations changing shades to revere the every movement of the sun high above us. 

My eyes saw in the language of Picasso, because although his soul was Spanish, his lasting inspiration was color. 

My eyes absorbed the rich color of the landscape in the language of Langston Hughes, because his poetic verses freed color from bondage. 

My thoughts spoke in the language of Gertrude Stein, because my mind like her language was for a time free from patriarchy.

My dreams spoke in the surrealist imagination of Salvador Dali, because the lines between life and dream, reality and imagination had disappeared. 

The mountains delivered me with a single thought, life is as irrational as it is beautiful to love.

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Author: Renee Newlon

I am a Turkish American writer and photographer. I work in short-form prose, poetic fragments, and photography. I don’t photograph the event; I photograph the moment after the event. A few things that stay with me: Plato’s Cave, Oberg’s Culture Shock, and Beethoven’s Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours. My greatest teacher was my college philosophy professor, Sister Jane Sullivan, who taught me how to think and how to see.

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