Night Is a Predator

I.

The mountains reflect mauve. Watermelon
pink. Color of blurred hawk tail. Hue of prey
carried away in a smear across the sky.

My mother calls, asks why I haven’t. She says
no news is never good news to a mother.
She reminds me of terrible things lurking
in alleyways. At this very moment somewhere
a woman is being buried in the dark part of town.

Which part of a city is the dark part?
Graves open, leaving scars across the dirt. This planet
is a rock hurtling through the dark. Under the sun
even our shadows have shadows.

The trailhead parking lot feels lightyears away.
The sun is already plunging behind the horizon—
an orange pebble I kick over the cliff edge
on my way down the crest trail. Shadows slant,
stalk, slink away. So easy to get caught up in one.

II.

I call my mom back and say nothing
about the time she almost drowned me
in the Desna River—my second home,
our almost grave.

I don’t remind her how a hungry hole
opened in the current to suck us under.
How a weak swimmer can be deadly
as a shark. How my hands clung to her
neck, clasped in prayer—
tiny wet miracles.

Then amber bubbles overhead, backlit
by sun, the color of joy fading to black.
Sinkhole of memory.

My father, asleep under a tree,
heard only the music in his headphones.
They tell me I was screaming.

All I heard was river.

III.

After we escaped the river’s mouth
there were nights when I would run
to her bed, convinced the darkness
was chasing me, afraid it was already
inside, aspirated like water in the lungs.

Cradled in her arms, I was a moon stashed
in the pines. Outside, the wolves circled.
Shush, she’d say carrying me back to my bed,
there’s nobody out there.

IV.

I became acquainted with darkness
in my first home—
my mother’s belly.

She doesn’t need to remind me safety
depends on staying in the light,
on keeping out of the path of shadows,
on sometimes staying silent.
Then, when your life depends on it,
screaming and flutter kicking back up
to the surface.

I know I must keep moving. The sharks
circle even as they sleep. 

V.

Behind the light’s fading rays, orange crumbs
prick the black sky. Faraway suns in the infinite
mouth of the universe. The night is a predator,
its endless hunger uncharted with newborn stars.

Night plunges a hungry curtain over Albuquerque.
I watch for the combustion of city lights to speckle
the asphalt. Incandescent. Winking sodium vapor.
Eye shine of the hawk.

Soon, the streetlamps will break open, spill
across the sand in godless wet haloes. The Mesa’s
black map waits to swallow someone—
a child, a woman,
the light.

I know change happens in the small holes
between seconds, like falling through time’s trap
door. Without warning the Earth can open
its mouth and I could fall in—
swallowed, no one around
to pull me out this time.