She had opened her mind to the words the way an eye used to darkness, veiled with its lashes, opens cautiously to the light, and, finding it even a little blinding, closes itself too late. The light had come, and come invincibly, even after the eye had renounced it. It was too late to unsee.

The darkness crumbles away—
It is the same old druid Time as ever.
Only a living thing leaps my hand—
A queer sardonic rat—
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.

[…]

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

At last I looked at her; I took her elbows and looked down into her face, her dear face. Liza is one of those women who is the envy and despair of all the other women her age; she always, always would look younger than she was and younger than all of them. It wasn't only the small, slender, firm body and the smooth skin and clear eyes; it was the way she carried herself, the way, when she moved or spoke, she released energy rather than stoking it up and eking it out like the rest of us. She kept her masses of blue-fired black hair rolled and folded up into a gleaming dark helmet and her eyes were not green, as they seemed to be, but an illuminated blue full of so many flecks of gold that they seemed to be green.

My favorite self-destructive candidate was a young philosophy graduate who delivered his opening-day introduction to the course. Several rivals had handed out syllabi and lectured on course rules. Yawn. But he began, “I am … ” — then clenched his face and grimaced while uttering his name. “And this is … ” — he sighed as if about to reveal the Ark of the Covenant — “Philosophy 101.”

Scorning preliminary definitions or rules, he drew Plato's cave on the board, complete with men, sun, shadows, and perhaps mice and lollipops, then announced, “This is a lesson in symbols. To study philosophy is to recognize the cave. Philosophy is not afraid of anything! Nothing!” He groaned like Prometheus having his liver pecked out by the eagle. “So how does learning happen?”

He turned toward the board as though to write, then spun back with wild eyes and cried, “I don't know!” His eight “students” jerked back as if Beelzebub had sprung at us. “What's going on here? I don't know!” He stared at his notes, then brushed them to the floor. “We will wrestle with the important questions. We will be afraid of nothing!” His passion swelled and deflated six times a minute as anguish and chaos battled for his soul.

It sits confidently at the end of every color spectrum. Stoic and without compromise. Mystery tangled in its darkness. A sibling to the deepest shadow. Befriending the night. Simple. Complicated. The only color that can pull you in while pushing you away is… Black.

Three matches one by one struck in the night
The first to see your face in it's entirety
The second to see your eyes
The last to see your mouth
And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
As I hold you in my arms.