Make it dark — coffee roaster steam tease my sinuses with Louisville tobacco side street feathers, molasses kiss pecking hairs that eyes have never seen but have cried over

Make it dark — all colors shimmer together and melted over a blackbird—superman blue sheen poured last—with his greying one-footed co-traveler vacationing in Carmel-by-the-Sea, odd little couple

Make it dark — chocolate biscotti crumb drops impatiently probed by my fellow traveler, her fare less than mine, though her camera shutter of finer quality, polite reminder that others are waiting for this table

Make it dark — pupils’ pitch black tar pits set in 1980s neon yellow iris discs make these off duty fashion photographers contort to get the perfect angle, admiring adobe walls and Spanish mission roofs and potted flowering bushes, though unimpressed by the out-of-towners that stumbled into their hidden café garden

Make it dark — this Californian soil steeped in spirits, dark seedling potentialities slipped out my pocket when I left a goodbye kiss years ago and dampened here in morning fogs I missed, now offer twisted cypress shade to another who came here maimed, whose bright eyes discern something on this violent petroglyph ledge of the promise, “You’re not alone.”