I am sorlune. Not the wound, but the lamp beside it,
a hush that tastes of snowfall melting on the tongue.
Do not call me grief; grief is heavier, salt like anchors.
I am the pale bruise music leaves after the last note is gone.
I arrived the night you opened that shoe box of letters,
paper creaking like winter bark.
Your breath leaned over the past and struck a match.
I climbed the margins and lit the chill.
That tremor in your pulse? That was sorlune.
I am the window you stare through to see a different year,
the silver stitched into asphalt after rain,
a moth made halo around the porch light of memory.
When you whisper a name and the room grows taller,
you are wearing me. sorlune. like borrowed velvet.
Children outgrow me, then meet me again in a thrift store mirror.
Lovers learn my second language on nights
when the bed is wide but the moon is wider.
I am the ache that doesn’t ask for apology,
the glow that refuses to stop at the skin.
Call me once and I live in your clavicle;
call me twice and I spool a soft film over the day.
Call me a third time and I draw a door in the wall,
chalk white, moon thin.
Step through and hear the piano
you can’t quite place. That half-melody? It’s sorlune.
Do I hurt? Of course. Gently.
I am merciful weather:
a late autumn warm spell passing over old rooftops.
I do not break; I bend the light around your losses
until the edges blur and the center breathes.
I am in the smell of peaches at closing time,
in the last train’s echo, in the noonroom of a museum
where a painting remembers you first.
I live between fingerprints on glass and the sky’s first star,
in the pocket where your hands meet themselves.
When you laugh and it cracks a little at the end.
that bright crackle? Sorlune.
When you say “I’m fine” and mean “Keep listening,”
I slip under the word like a tide under a boat.
I don’t heal the past; I make it sing in tune.
I am sorlune, archive of light, curator of almost,
keeper of the glow that shadows borrow.
If you must define me, use your own breath as ink…
write slowly, leave room for the spill.
I will sign my name on the inside of your quiet,
and you will find me later, warm as a forgotten scarf.
Say it with me…
sorlune, sorlune, sorlune.
each time softer,
each time brighter,
until what hurts begins to illuminate
and what glows learns how to ache…
I was challenged to create a word that never existed and let it describe itself in verse.
It’s not perfect, but it is mine, and I hope it reaches you. Enjoy 🙂
Word: Sorlune (sore-loon)
Core meaning: The luminous ache of beauty remembered; nostalgia made of moonlight.
Origin (invented): from sore (tender, aching) + lune (moon). Also nods to French lune and Latin lumen (light).
Part of speech: noun (primary), adjective (poetic), verb (rare).
• noun: “A hush fell, heavy with sorlune.”
• adj.: “A sorlune glow on the letters.”
• verb: “I sorluned through the old house.”
Examples in sentences:
1. “Your voicemail had sorlune in every pause.”
2. “The city at 2 a.m, all glass and sorlune.”
3. “He wore a sorlune grin, like a door left almost closed.”
4. “We sorluned our way back to the names we used to use.”
