When I was a kid I was afraid of the dark

My father said:

It’s the black —

left behind 

when the light of Jesus

Finds no one to catch it

You cast the shadow

And what do you have to be afraid of?

What are you thinking?

What were you watching?

My bedroom was a monochrome broadcast of my life

I watched from the corner of the ceiling. 

I learned that white keeps a record—

It has to stay untouched—

no mixing, no blur.

Even a trace of darkness

Knows where to press

I didn’t know that color is what happens

when certainty starts to splinter

Even “dark” has shades—marine blue, rust, bruise-purple—

and light can break itself into too many names

Like a kind of red you feel before you name it.

Like a child discovering yellow had a family 

The entire time.

And now 

At the other end

He tells me where I’m going,

I recognize the cadences of secondhand fear,

The light of the news casts his shadow