dark does not fall, it billows. At first it’s just a light smoke, a smudge of incense. Little dream in a patch of shade. It’s once it catches…enough to smoke you right out of time, she said.

Strega told me the seal of day never caught on with humankind. Always, she whispered, there were little high energy packets of resistance, stinging nettles, an absence, upon which the overweening light stumbled. It’s this. How the borderland came to be—the earth-sky broke open. She said, now a little light kick tips dreams into the cup of our heads.

Dark is only possible. A broken horizon invalidates the warranty.

Of course this was before she passed over the sill, tipping pot over tea kettle, her black skirt catching wind, pillowing to cushion her fall. Still, once she’d died things she’d tell me made much more sense. For example, the dark she tells me, you’ll find the odor of sanctity is the pale purple of Neptune’s rose.

I thought I’d test that one so to the dark I went nose first. The edges of day and night, more like the air above a frying mushroom. I’m telling you.