MIDNIGHT HOURS
When I was a little girl,
back in the days when I slept all the way through the night
I thought that at 12 o’clock
the world went completely pitch black
Like you were blind, like you couldn’t see,
like nothing existed except for darkness
Of course, as I grew older,
I discovered that the midnight hours are
the only time when the world
marries itself to the rest of your senses
At fifteen I stayed awake on the phone until one in the morning,
twisting the curly cord around my fingers
until it wound all over my body
leaving desperate red welts on my skin
In the sunlight they looked like bruises,
but when I lay in my bed
all I could feel were soft lips tracing the trails
of all the secret places I wanted to go
Everything made sense
in those dark and golden hours
when my breathing slowed and my voice grew raspy
as I inhaled his jasmine-scented words
During those months spent
living off of that heady floral aroma
it was like I found a part of myself
but lost another,
Like I was blind, like I couldn’t see
like nothing existed except for darkness
and at the same time, I could feel
the warmth of his skin against mine
more intensely than I would
if I could look into his deep brown eyes
My sight came back for a few colorful years
though I missed the intoxication
of his voice and his body, missed
getting high off of his tongue and breath,
missed winding myself around
the tired ticking of the clock
and moving to the rhythm of
the music from dreams I did not have
You made me blind once more
when we crashed together on a summer wind
and everything made sense
in our dark and golden hours
But when I look back, I remember
how lost I felt when the clock struck twelve
And the fact is, though you knew my eyes had failed,
I always walked to the train station by myself