Today I feel the cool blue of reflection. Wrapped up tight inside myself, tucked in at all the corners, I am made smooth...absorbing, then tossing back, the images surrounding me. In my daily life I strive for reason, adhering to the strict rules of polite society. But occasionally...when the night gets inside my breath and steals sleep from me...the poet escapes. She lives in the night. In the stillness. Where the light does not grab expression from her eyes...dark bruised oceans, churning...they toss moonlight into the air; shadows like silver. In the night she can keep them to herself. She creeps, like Janet behind the yellow wallpaper, but she will not rattle the pattern, instead... ...she stands in the twilight and lets the night slip into her breath, stealing into her blood. She will write, words frenzied, but not her. She will calm them, tame them, sing them into shapes, trick them into lying still before the dawn comes and tugs the night away. She will shower, press her slacks and meet the right people for lunch at the right restaurant. Later, when the twilight won't claim her, she will squeeze what remains of the ocean from her eyes, and promise herself she will not to wait in the dusk anymore.