these nights

          time   
          feels
          like  a balloon animal
          forfeiting form

                                            a pained gasp amid the static

                    a dream
        blooming
                    through a crack    in nothing

          like Hiroshima’s shadows

          a trauma
                    homesick
                    for a body
          long relinquished
          onto a rain of light.


          (today I watched
            a kingfisher
            abdicate its colors to the dusk

          and I suddenly recalled
          the way the shadows clung to you
                              when lightning struck

                                how in a moment
                                of pure luminance
                                you constituted
                                all of night

                                I should have known then
                                that you had made up your mind.)