NANCY TAYLOR EVERETT

Juliet and Dark

            Come, go, good Juliet   V.iii

Juliet watches the others run and fall
in the fading light, laughing and hooting
into the cavernous street.

Juliet doesn’t answer
although she hates the dark,
the press of it on her face,
the smothering all aloneness.

The air flattens to black. She carefully lies back
and spooks the stars with her flashlight.
Some fly endlessly away,
sucked by some monstrous inhale.
Some sink towards her, lightly,
soundless as moths.

She sprawls until she is as pointed as a pentagon,
as if head and arms and legs could embrace
the pulsing concave lens above; her body
transmutes the last warmth beneath

into some new Juliet
finally, irrevocably,
breathing on her own.