I Hate the Dark

I hate the dark.
I hate those shadowed implications
imposed unwilling within walled rooms
or open spaces gradually enclosed
by nighttime's nightly sudden
fall
from

grace. Is

what my eyes can't see more blinding
than this binding blackness? I
hate darkness.
Hate how hate's a word so easily bandied
where mouths forgot that we are one blood,
one race... are one...
are one....

Our one imagined differences
so damn superficial as to be superior
to mere petty substance.
Why not? Within our dark we forgot
our skin is always birthed stark naked.

frail.

Forgot that differences spell multi-hued beauty.
Thought it our duty to correct them
into neatly nattered lines. Find the different one, child,
then mark it for deletion. Learn to conform.
Avoid chaos.

Did you know a chaos of butterflies
is called a kaleidoscope?
Wonder if they bicker like we do?

I hate... non-sight. Babbled nonsense
in arguments over whose lives matter...
symbolic word games transforming semantics
into weapons of war.
As in all lives matter, but mine matters more.
No, mine!
No, mine!

Yes, yours.
Because you're my neighbor.
My friend.
My brother.
And lately we've all been scribbling blind,
pretending we're drawing clear lines
in sand we can't see.

Truth: we're erasing sanity in maddest rush
to sanitize shadows.

And I hate the dark.
It's time I learn to be a light.