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.