Juliet and Dark

Juliet watches the others run and fall

in the fading light, laughing and hooting

into the cavernous street.

Juliet doesn’t answer

although she hates the dark,

the press of it on her face,

the smothering all aloneness.

She sprawls until she is as pointed as a pentagon,

as if head and arms and legs could embrace

the pulsing concave lens above; her body

transmutes the last warmth beneath

into some new Juliet

finally, irrevocably,

breathing on her own.