Passage
I.
Like water lost in the sea,
I never see myself more than a fleeting second.
I never know what may be there inside
the mirror, except a shadow stretched
across the glass. I stop taking the pills.
A person can’t move
past the things she hates, and I hate
the darkness.
Since I was young I’ve hated
the darkness.
II.
As a child I used to have a dream about a lady with no face.
She freezes in the snow and ash,
stands shivering wet in her nightgown
somehow wailing.
She tries to drown me in a swamp
behind an old factory,
but I stab the side of her head with a ball-point pen
too many times to recognize her afterwards.
III.
In the darkness
there are only the disquieting clicks of soot,
choking out the air and blackening the inches.
IV.
How does light enter a house?
Through the open windows.
How does light enter a person?
I ask myself again and again.
All of the doctors have the answer. They hand out capsules,
with the promise of filling a soul with sunlight.
I am only filled with holes,
broken light and chinks in my bones.
V.
No one sees how I rely on these shadows
like the tall waves rely on the lightning to strike.
Everyone has a darkness they must feed, a blood
they must draw upon to reach the light.
A person can’t move past the things she hates, and I hate
the darkness.
I feed the darkness.
VI.
I think of how my letter might read
to the person who finds me, unidentifiable,
cavernous, poked through to the bone:
If you’d like I’ll stay awake for my autopsy
to keep you company before I go.
Please bury me in daylight.
There’s nothing to keep you company in the dark.
VII.
With the pretense of a proffered peace
I stop taking the pills. Each day
I feel the chemical sunlight
leaving my body dark,
the way it was made. I cling to this nighttime
now. My body wraps around this evening
in the way a body should. In the way a moon flower awakes
at twilight so that she may see the dawn.
VIII.
In my dreams
a match is lit,
and whispers to the darkness
shhhhhhhh.
before bravely burning out.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
