When they first
glimpsed Creation, it was only
half-lit.
Half-lit,
as in, only half-clear—
that night, they discerned
and imagined.
In the mind’s waters,
a blurring, a refraction.
There, we were brimming,
we were multitudes,
but they saw our darkness
and named us Dark.
Copyright © 2018 by Adeeba Shahid Talukder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 21, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.