IN THE MIDDLE

Somewhere between afterimage and stark reality,
I bend back into my shadow
like a circle that is not yet,
reaching for the edge, an attempt to seal the rift
between my light and my dark.

The waking is not part of the dream
and yet, it is there, in that moment between--
the hollow that is seldom ever filled--
where they merge, two textures commingling:
so which the silk, then, and which the velvet?
Where does one end and the other begin?

I uncurl from the margins of my slumber
and stretch out into wakefulness. It is a violet dawn
that I see, floating in through the window.

I close my eyes once more, still
wafting in my memory of darkness.
Something had pulled me away from the embrace
of sleep, where it was night, where I felt safe.
What rippled the stillness?

A flickering, somewhere. A faint memory of light,
like the agony that uncertainty, now and then, becomes.