The poems in Noctilucent begin where light exists or is created in darkness, a paradox. But this is not a 'dark / light' of metaphor, but of the real and of relationship, where algae illumines the deep sea, the light of dead stars reach us from deep space, and night is a doorway, an entrance into the interior-of self, other, cosmos. Melissa Buckheit bridges human experience-personal, historical, social-into this space where the very thing which is invisible or hidden, must be spoken. There is no Truth-but truths, identity, eros, suffering, loss gleam along the interstices of the lyric as meaning embedded in a strange and musical syntax. We are surprised, as if by a pale-white, fragrant Datura blooming unforgivingly in the dark of night, by her intimacy and electric force. In Noctilucent, the beloved is every human body, a decaying salmon, or the lilts of a lover's voice-our human devotion to memory.