You are heavy in your sheets 
half listening to a radio show on butterflies. 

This guy on tv has been asking 
the right questions for forty days. 

There are night patterns and day patterns and
butterflies evolving from moths after being like
what if we’re awake during the day… 

They asked the right question. 
That is one way you could change your life. 

Once, I woke up by myself in the dark 
certain it would never be day again. 

That was before I considered lanterns, 
their tin holes punched from the inside out, 
so the wind couldn’t blow your candle 
while you were out back checking on your horse. 

Where is my horse? 

Will I see it? The whole thing? 

Not like the other night, 
the outline of a woman and her dog 
that froze on the sidewalk as I approached. 

First I thought, they are waiting for me. 

Then I worried they could see how I’d been walking, 
mumbling my name to myself, as if in response.

Published October 27, 2024

Fran Matos’ poems have recently appeared in Angel Food and Columbia Journal.

Dan Flavin (born April 1, 1933, Jamaica, Queens, New York, U.S.—died November 29, 1996, Riverhead, New York) was an American artist whose installations featuring fluorescent lighting tubes in geometric arrays emit a rich ambient monochrome or multicoloured light that subtly reshapes the interior spaces in which they are displayed, creating intense visual sensations for the viewer. He was one of the leading exponents of Minimalist art and importantly influenced the direction of international contemporary art.