Rosalie Morales Kearns: One Night You Sleep
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Time Between
The matchhead strikes
and the icon lamp glows.
The bell sounds a note
and then the next.
The finger grips the trigger
and the bullet flies.
It’s the time between.
Plenty of time.
One day you feast, the next
you go without.
One night you sleep by a warm fire,
another on a cold prison floor.
One day you see strange markings
on paper, and one day
they form words.
You have known respect, unearned,
and scorn, also unearned.
You turned liar,
and the lies turned true.
Soldiers arrive and
you lay down your books.
Take your pick:
gallows, cross.
Next time, you tell yourself.
Time enough.
Rosalie Morales Kearns, a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, is the author of the novel Kingdom of Women (Jaded Ibis, 2017) and founder of the feminist publishing house Shade Mountain Press. Her poems have been published in the Nasty Women Poets anthology, and in Luna Luna, Literary Hatchet, Danse Macabre, and other journals.
