SHE WALKS SURROUNDED BY REFLECTIONS

Red does not erupt.

It remains.

Like a warm prayer upon the skin,

like a rose that learnt to unfold even within the shadow.

Red holds memory.

It carries the scent of ripened fruit beneath the summer sun,

of damp petals,

of slow fire breathing quietly within the body.

It is the colour of intensity.

Of the soul when it feels too much

and still chooses to remain open to the world.

She walks surrounded by reflections.

Long shadows, delicate, ever-changing,

as though different versions of herself were moving through the air beside her body.

Some are no more than a glimmer.

Others lean slowly against the walls of time.

Yet none arrive to darken her.

Shadows, too, are a form of light.

Life asks us to look towards them,

not to lose ourselves within them,

but to understand the depth of what we are.

For growing also means recognizing one’s own reflection in unexpected places:

in a window at night,

in the gaze of another,

in the movement of a red cloth turning softly above the void.

Sometimes the reflection arrives before we are ready.

And yet there is something sacred in that moment.

As though the soul had always known

that we were never meant to inhabit a single form,

but rather a constellation of presences coexisting within the same light.

She understands this.

That is why she does not flee from her shadows.

She lets them bloom around her like invisible petals,

like soft echoes of the same inner beauty.

And red accompanies her like a secret language.

It does not speak of excess,

but of the serene fire of being alive.

Of feeling deeply.

Of burning without destroying oneself.

Perhaps poetry is only this:

learning to contemplate our many shadows

until we discover that even they

were made of beauty.

Marcela Acevedo

Photo: @studiokapture

Pub: @imiragemagazine

MUA & Hair: @milecuellar_makeup

Art Dir: @marsacevedito

Creative Agency: @awoven.co

Model: @gabrielavillarraga_