morning myths: burnt toast
by matt robinson

                      Here it is then, the dark thing,
                      the dark thing you have waited for so long.
                      You have made such melodramas

                       - from "Waiting" by Margaret Atwood

                                       here it is then: the dark thing,
released. it must have slipped out

of your nose - camouflaged by
a sneeze - or dribbled onto your pillow in the middle

of the night and dried - vaporized, perhaps - before
your waking. but it is out: it is

the burnt toast, is the scorched coffee that
assaults your tongue and tastes, you soon note, absolutely

devoid of cream. (there is not even
a trace of skim milk. no, there is only - everywhere -

                            the dark thing you have waited for so long
to be rid of in the midst of your sleep.) and just

because you have waited so long for
it to be out, you had not given much thought to - had

not expected - this moment: the aftermath, the toast. you
are entirely unprepared. and so these

dark things, these morning shadows now released
to drone their sullen

music free across the sheets and through the sluggish swing of your gait, help you comprehend the sort of bed

                                 you have made. such melodramas:
these our half-lit, half-conscious mornings. an inflicting

of barely remembered night
terrors on the unsuspecting counter-top gleam of days'

introductions; a gratuitous kind of foolishness; something
best left, if considered, to children

of a particular age. but, nonetheless, the jaundiced
reassurances of the streetlights on

each and every morning still seem necessary,
oddly, no matter how imagined we suppose dark things to be.