The Moonflowers

It's as if the dark, which had before
just been context, gave to vulnerability
a permission, almost: fleshy saucers of
spilled cream, so many parchment fists,
unfisting; and now, in pieces, the delicate
mask of an indifference offered radically
up against what, each time, seems as
unthinkable, as unexpected, as when,

in the long dream of retraction, that sea
that is finally not a sea, but what else
to call it, begins again its shifting, and
though to every push of the will forward
there's something noble—which is to say,
something lonely, also—it's too late.

-- Carl Phillips