Tonight, a peculiar wind prowls the streets,
restless as my mind, which hungers for sleep,
yet lingers on the jagged edges of fractured dreams.
"Look toward the horizon," you always said,
"even when it trembles like a distant mirage."
The puckered lips of the news spit half-truths,
while the dark waltz of curtains,
thrust by the wind’s indifferent hands,
casts shadows like ghosts across my room.
At two AM, I turn off the TV,
its drone silenced,
and reach for Douglass—my refuge.
Smarter than all his former masters,
he writes with a voice carved from stone,
each word a clobbering hammer.
Through unfallen tears, I trace the lines:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.”
Father, one day I will leave this earth
and seek you in the realm of water—
but not yet. Tonight,
the stars fall like splintered light,
as if the sky itself were unravelling.
You know I will not run; I will be dragged,
and the defiant pulse of my heart will beat
through the engulfing dark horizon that lies ahead.