[37] The “Talk,” Imran Boe Khan

You’ve been warned,
you cannot be night again,
rest and dark cannot board,
snare or exhume
your punch-drunk tongue,
there is no blessing thin enough
to slip into the gums
of your planned escape route.
Up your exposure to comedy,
release the night,
unlearn the urge to disappear enough.
After you understand the ceremony
of telling the world you are willingly alive,
apply layers of light to your body
until it’s convinced the light never left.
Tell the story you ought to tell,
not the one you want to. Leave that one
for the ground. Stay a while.
The light of dawn can brighten any barrel of a gun.
It’s like this: your burial dirt
will be just the right age and temperament
for whatever we have failed to notice
that needs to be understood.