Dave Bonta's "Infection" is a short, unsettling poem about darkness and distrust. It opens with an image of night "let out of a cold cellar," as if darkness had been stored somewhere underground and has now been released to spread. The picture is physical and a little eerie: night doesn't simply fall, it escapes.
In the second stanza, the ground seems to "favor us / as more real." The idea is slippery. Perhaps the earth feels solid and certain in a way that people, drifting in the dark, do not. Then the final lines turn inward. The speaker says it isn't safe to trust their own hands, which suggests a loss of control, or a fear of what the body might do or carry.
The title hints that something is spreading, whether fear, unease, or sickness. Judging by the imagery, the mood is cold, tense, and uncertain. Even the most basic things, the ground and one's own hands, begin to feel unreliable.