When all we had to show from several sunlit days was skin burned red from heat we learned to avoid the light, learned that freedom breathes in darkness, where shadows cloak secrets and we become blinded by anything beyond this warmth of togetherness. Light limps toward us in the demands of dawn so we hide beneath the shade of trees, and in the rustling of branches during storm the wind sends her message, barely a sigh in the rumbling thunder but something about white flags and the closing of curtains. But I won't surrender, for in nightfall I've discovered that I don't need candles or stars when I have the glow of your eyes.