The Night
Free Verse
The night is alive.
Tree branches rattle like bone necklaces and fingers of soft light
pull back, retreating from midnight’s confidence.
Cover of darkness washes away daytime terrors,
eclipses the tedious hours before it,
tears apart the masks of the day.
Night is a renegade freed from day’s fatigue
and clamor.
Strange dreams prowl the dark
alongside hearts laying bare tender truths.
Warm fingers threaded together in the dark are larger
than the oceanic expanse of stars in a shattered black sky.
Solace is found in muted voices, dark ceilings, sweet confessions.
The night makes soul-baring rebels of us,
fighting off sleep to stay in a dream
of shivering hearts and careful questions hovering in
spaces in-between.
Fear softens its iron hold around the ribcages of almost lovers
— heavy weights lifted, shifted, transcended —
and words unspoken by day are
whispered, tentatively, in shadow.
At morning’s edge creeps horizon glow,
peeling back the blanket of the night
to find a tear in the fabric, a deviation in the play.
The night changes day
irreversibly.
