"Heir to the Night" by Jerome Ramcharitar

The night deepens in its newest song.

Heat has dissolved, its breaths now long,

all in the acquisition of a shade—

but humid as a swamp, gloriously decayed,

the city is reborn in sound and sight;

a child of strife, the city of the night.

Evening has left small pleasures to taste,

obsidian allure layered with loss and waste.

I have waited, drunk all the shades of day,

and grinned with lust, designed to say—

darkness is the puzzle of yesterday’s delight:

appetite and anarchy, twin kings of the night.

The night and the past are one;

symbol and substance in the darkness done.

You have forgotten the language of silk,

you decadent children of blood and milk;

you unlearned the language that brought you sight,

what we sang to the dark, those dirges of the night.

Night has music and a purer tone:

it is fear, a fullness of self unknown.

Drink the dark and you become it, whole and bright.

Remember: you, too, are heir to the night.

Jerome Ramcharitar is a writer based in Montréal, Québec. Most of his days are spent teaching English as a second language and occasionally causing more trouble as a poet. A language fanatic, he has dipped his fingers into editing, translation, and the dangerous world of card games. His first chapbook, The Wrong Poem and Others Like It, was published with Cactus Press in 2021.