Pulse

This darkness is only
an absence of light.

It has no identity,
no substance; is brittle
as an empty heart.

With the sanity of daylight,
there will be no faces
in the soft architecture
of billowing curtains,
or voices drifting in
this river of night wind.

Nearby, the city pulses
with all the yearning
and fragile precision
of being young.

Next door, a dark brown voice
blurs into static.

In the genesis
of a poem-shaped morning,
as greyness slowly
takes root,
the street gives up
the oil-slicked corpse
of a rainbow.

Small razors of rain
slash at the window
and a phone crouches coldly.
The darkness
is only an absence.