Aurora 2025 with cover

Kaitlyn Carpenter

Vanity of Vanities Have you ever wondered if the birds admire the moon? If, drifting high on silent wings of white, They watch it wane yet never call it ruined, Nor mourn the loss that softens silver light? Once, in the hush before the break of day, A bird rode easy where the warm winds blew. The sky was wide, the air a golden bay, And every breath a song the heavens knew. But fate is fickle—storms will shift and swell, A wayward gust, a twist too sharp, too fast. No warning came before the moment fell, No whisper told which flight would be its last. The winds grew strange, the air too thin to hold, And sudden emptiness unstrung the air. The bird, once certain, spiraled, lost, and cold, A shadow tossed upon the currents there.

It lingered long where trembling branches sighed, While others wheeled through endless, careless blue.

Yet sorrow does not live in loss alone, But in the doubt of what remains still true.

But flight was never in the feathers’ grace.

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