Dark Magic

I paint moonflowers in memory
of love songs that died in the night,
their blossoms now faint
on concrete floors, debauched,
in their wrinkled spentness,
as indecipherable hieroglyphs.

Moonflowers live a yesterday moment,
an unrepeatable serenade,
a transparent tissue of experience
like the thin iridescence
left on the sidewalk from the fireflies
we squashed, without compunction,
to enchant the night with stolen light.

We were children,
oblivious to the cruelty
of children, practicing dark
magic we had no right to but did
to conjure spells that
looked a little like love.

Now, older, we climb life
like moonflower vines, still collecting
cruelties committed in evening’s blur
to steal another glimpse of love
in the only way we know how
and we circle again and again
in the only way we know how
until the only way we know how
hurts
enough
to force
an inward
bloom,
with radiant
shadows,
fragile light
in humble
darkness.

-Kitty Yanson