Black

Black is wherever
all of what I just wrote went
when my computer crashed.
Black is the qualities of the gaps in my memory
made manifest.

Black is a Black-light Night
at a goth club and the Bitch
who throws me shade, and says to my face
that my "blacks don't match."

The inside of a barrel of crude oil.
Black is charred animal bones.
Black is lung cancer.

Black is the heavy velvet curtain
of a blessed dreamless sleep.
Black is the cloak of the apparition
that has been haunting the corner
of my room
for the last two nights.

Black is more of an assertion than a question.
Black is the high desert on a moonless night.
Black is what the light is like inside me.

Black patent leather.
Black enamel lacquer.
Shiny vinyl records.
Defensive nail polish.