Where do you go at night, Boris?
Where do you go that I can’t,
being a girl who knows better
than to
roam alleyways
in the dark,
the one lesson from my
adolescence that stuck.
But let me tell you a
secret, Boris.
I used to know the
night, too.
When I was ten and
the world wasn’t
what it is,
I used to creep
out over the dark wet grass
to the shed out back
whose roof I could climb on
and, catlike,
sit and watch and listen.
It is exquisite
to be alone in the dark,
a feeling of danger
at the edges,
but there’s your
house right there,
there’s the door,
don’t worry.
Is this what it is for you, Boris,
sitting on the neighbor’s roof
in the black night
and seeing my window there?
Can you hear my breathing,
the dogs’ deep sighs,
your sister’s purr
carrying over the
rippling night air?
And do you think, Boris,
how terribly beautiful
it all is,
this world that
lives in a frenzy all day,
then drops
limp
like a new baby
into the deep sleep of night?
When I was ten
and on a roof,
I may have thought
such things.
In the silent black of night,
only deep reassurances
fill the mind,
and it is a safe world
for children and cats,
and God is not so lost.