You are Night and yet you come at dawn – still warm
in the place where they pried your mother’s fingers,
dozing in the back of a ’59 Mini that coughs you onto
a cobbled road; its hungry cracks that swallow little girls.
This red-brick cul-de-sac semi, its iron wrought
with hints of penny sweets, cricket fields, dead canals – this
is the House of Day (Mr., Mrs., and their three Sunbeams).
This is where you enter – scoured, powdered – toes turned out
(refracted hope); prayered and pressed in your Sunday best
(stiff and white, so they will see themselves).
They call you Sherry:
agree you will age briefly
before being consumed;
know you come from darker soil,
will make for sweeter wine.
And yes, they drink at Night (get drunk on you).
Yes, Days shine when Sunbeams scatter darkness.
Night sleeps deep in covers
but Day bites awake.
Night is full of secrets
that Day cracks open.
Night fails to mend shadows
when Day breaks everything.
And by the time dusk comes for Day;
by the hour that sun sets,
you too will have learned to hate Night,
you too will fear the dark.
Isabelle Baafi is a 27-year-old female writer of Jamaican and South African descent. Her works have been published in Allegro, Moko Magazine, Litro, Kalahari Review and elsewhere. She has performed at the Battersea Arts Centre. She was recently admitted to the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.