Sitting in the dark

I see now
because I'm really looking.
Rods and cones,
electric tempests of the mind
flaring fireworks as pupils dilate.
Skulking, hawk-eyed,
I capture infinitesimal detail
so no flicker escapes,
nothing is lost in the dimness
or beguiles me into thinking
it was just my imagination.

Have you noticed how
every colour in the dark
has far more shades than when it's bright?
A blue that's not exactly blue, but steel;
A gold more burnished and ashen;
Red glowers and yellow is hickoried.
Life and love, outside the glare and glory
of noonday sun,
bare baleful truths in dying light.

I hear so keenly in the dark.
The faintest, furthest dirges
that are an early nightingale's lament.
Crickets twitching their feelers,
rubbing tiny hands
to ward off autumn cold.
The wind snipping blades
through skies taut like silk.

I hear Time
ticking off my life.
Each breath inhaled,
each conscious moment
mere grains of sand
tumbled and lost,
churning in the wash of the bay.
I hear the crack of my heart,
breaking at the thought of you,
so inextricably embedded within me
and yet so distant,
irretrievable.

I watch you in my mind.
Camouflaged in the gloaming
I see every thought you're thinking,
blank speech bubbles above you
trailing like ghosts,
belying lost dreams.
In darkened distance I track you
pacing back and forth,
ever decreasing meaning
in your daily humdrum minutiae.
I hear the sighs you dare not sigh,
the creak of each enforced smile
the muffled, secret donning of your masks
so none would know your malfunction.
At times you prickle and I pause,
thinking I'm discovered
as both hearts miss a beat;
until you resume,
oblivious to my scrutiny
and I am relegated to muted shadow.

I scream at you in silence,
knowing I could never declare aloud
words I must swallow;
unspoken thoughts
mouthed across the wide expanse
of our separateness;
alighting on your blindness,
pounding on your deafness.

Heaving from the effort
of my immobility,
my invisibility,
I am spent,
just sitting here in the dark.