on paper. Dark is formless and limitless.

Sky-long. The instant measures how far it goes

in a line. It’s an order. It goes as one to the other

like signals. Parallels to the other.

Blinking. Dark. Flash. I see as the dead see

through stars. Dark curtains, candles behind

them. Fire, halting the automatic lampposts. I

become a mourner of light. I don’t dare question

if I'm seen but wonder if my tears are making

noise. You can't hear a deception as you see one.

It does not smile. Dark surrounds the mouth,

inside and out. Hides relatively face the darkest

side of a creature. Corners, burrows, caves, cars.

Eyes. Darkness is a pit of a pupil. Blind to all

but a sclera. Like secrets. Dark closes them in.

Cupped in the folds of angel wings. Dark is a

place of beauty, of self. Gentle and pale. Gentle

but pale. Untouched by the Fourth of July

fireworks that, in reaching, scatter, saying bang!

louder than the multicolor. Red and blue which

love into purple. Night. Teenage thighs. Bruised

sky. Snow forms in heaven’s dandruff, healing

them in flaky moon skin.

Dark becomes a surface. A shield reflecting

silvery steps, walking, almost hand-in-hand,

alongside some vulnerability.

Lynsey is an eighteen year old writer/artist living in Kentucky where she runs her own online store based on her textile mediums.

Authors Notes: These pieces exhibit the shame that follows self-acceptance--the fact that we exist in ourselves, or that, when reflections face us, bare skin, bare flaw, raw, we can only look back and let that image sit, or sink, either with us, or beyond us. These pieces I wrote in trying to decide which.