THE NIGHT KNOWS

The night kicks down the door and finds me standing, waiting,

hands stained with what I swallowed whole just to seem normal.

It turns off the light in the glass and leaves only the pen

cutting the silence in half — one half bleeds, the other is born.

Writing is tearing out with a fingernail what has rotted inside,

is letting the raw word be born larger than the lies I heard all day,

is feeling silence turn to bone, turn to blood, turn to mouth.

There is a pact none of us ever signed, only bled:

it lends me the darkness, I return it in flesh of words;

it hides the monster, I have the courage to devour it with its name.

The pen pierces the paper and there is no more pretending —

the word tears apart, the sentence skins, the comma is a blade.

I bring out what others only whisper with their eyes closed.

Dawn comes. The night retreats like a murderer who was never at the scene.

But the written shadow never returns to the dark.

Once written, no shadow ever becomes silence again.

J. KASRA — All rights reserved.