Daybreak on the world.
Tsunami into every crevice.
Spears into the sonnet
of night.
My eyelids opened
to the steel gears
of trains,
rolling by my window.
No boy had a window
like my own,
a jewel of poverty.
Dawn, and the rainbow
of coal dust on the glass.
I reached for sleep
under my pillow.
Dared day to catch me.
I peeped at shadows
jumping on the wall.
Then my fingers
making birds,
black angels.
Do shadows love?
Touch us invisibles?
Do they believe in their makers?
Do they shadow box
with each other?
Become things they’re not?
Do shadows live in the dark?
Ever run away?
Become black rainbows?
Are they existential
like me?
Epiphany borrowing
my heart and soul.
Walking on a road
on which I am nothing
but a ghost,
loving what a shadow is.