what began as a song for darkness

Miriam Tomusk

(The format has been modified for the screen. To read the original version, check out the print version on Issuu)

i screamed at the darkness and it didn’t flinch so i sang a song about the darkness because i thought it could hear but i guess it must have been deaf or otherwise occupied so i tried to cut through the darkness and i wrestled it to the ground but it rose and swelled and filled me so i wrote a thesis about the darkness even a best-selling novel and the money flew in but i still couldn’t see it so i sewed a garment from the darkness and wore it cloaked in pride hoped every needle puncture would remind it of the pain i too could inflict i mailed the darkness to my best friend it took a while to fold but i did it crammed into an envelope hoping it would arrive intact and then i gave a speech about the darkness so i could pierce it with my voice but when it would not comply i shredded the darkness and knitted from it a blanket to keep me company and then i started to think about how the darkness made me feel but all i really wanted was for someone to turn on the light.

LIGHTS ON

and I saw myself

shattered shards scattered

my voice clattered

and clamoured

echoing

in a room where the windows still rattled

(echoing in my own hollowness)

from where the darkness fled after it chewed me up and

spattered

my dry bones bare to the light to be surgically examined.

My bones with bated breath

expected a doctor’s deliberation,

accompanying prescriptions that they would have to self-administer

—but none came.

i tried to tackle the light like i’d tackled the darkness but it refused to be tackled and it refused to be confined and it just sat there inviting me to drink it all up.

TODAY

I carry (water) I sometimes still fear will ooze

(from the cracks) though none I lose

I carry (a story) in the glass, stained no more by darkness’s mark but by light wishing to beautify

itself

and in so doing it beautifies me

performing a dance across the borders—

I am a topographical survey of painful valley crossings

But the light is gentle and helps me see that nothing can escape through the ridges,

a wholeness—a holiness—of what once were holes

I say I carry but really I am inhabited

and all I know of the mystery is that light dwells among the shards with remarkable clarity.

Miriam is doing a year of theology at Corpus after completing her history degree there. She is convinced that if she goes on enough windswept country walks she will one day become a Brontë heroine, but until then you can probably find her browsing through second-hand stores, curled up in a cafe, or frantically planning to bake more for her friends.