I Switch Off All The Lights
#19 of poetry
2020 was also the year I found out, after the fact, that one of my siblings had married a literal, self-identified, white supremacist.
My parents went to that wedding. They didn't go to mine, because it would've been sinful to attend a gay marriage.
But that one was fine.
2020 was also the year I decided I was changing my last name.
Almost through the heavy stuff. Two left.
I switch off all the lights. Those that I love
Are all abed, both in the other room
And all across the city that I love.
I see my way across the meagre room
And to the too-tall curtains by the light
Of thrift-store stained-glass lamp, by oven light,
By streetlight spilling through venetian blinds,
And by the moon through torn translucent clouds.
She also does not sleep. She also walks
To look upon the city that she loves.
And wakeful too, past midnight, not so far
Away as I must wish that they could be
Are those whose minds are bent on ending me
And those abed I love, and I suppose
The city too, for sin of sheltering
And being loved by such as me and mine.
Among them there those that once I thought
My kin. This thought does not keep me from sleep.
Nor does the thought of ever looming war,
But what comes after? Will they still hang lamps
On balconies? Will chocolate still be shared?
Will they lay gameboards in the upper rooms?
Will they still talk of otherworldly grief
In teashops? Will they walk beneath the trees
And savor the green coolness of the shade?
How many homes that I had learned to love
Are lost to me. I may yet lose this too.
No power have I to amend this world,
To stay or slow this coming tide. I can
Not even trust to save those that I love.
Eternity and Time may know, the Moon
May guess, my city's fate. But I can only pray,
With all the lights switched off, as lights must be,
That if it must be lost, someone, someday
Will, seeing in the ruin some small sign--
A lantern on a balcony, perhaps--
Then understand that once this place was loved.