The realities of the night are inescapable.
These hollow hours that I love—
they betray me in the close of darkness.
Often they’d bring me poetry
and a sweet, pleasant melancholy
but lately, they come with the ignored pleas
I’ve eluded in bright and distracting daylight.
The night has become a subtle splintering,
a folding in of creaking walls,
a nervous step, a knot balled in my stomach.
Someone tell me how,
if you would, if you could,
to steal my hollow hours back
from the rattling emptiness of the night.