hello through goodbye
I swim up through my dreams
(tasting bark but my tree stays tree)
and break my surface, bristling upwards
snarling silently as I launch my body
teeth-first at the intruder--
thank god for sleep paralysis.
there's nobody here except cats
who have just knocked something
over and me, tied to bed with gravity
and fighting with the brain-burn
of interrupted dream--
but listen.
at three am I hear the house breathing
the long slow heartbeat of the neighborhood
sirens distant as tinnutus
the long loping sound of night birds
more imagined than heard in the slough--
it is enough.
cradled in unseen arms and
soothed by imagined voices
I rock back into sleep, lulled
by all those things on the edge of my mind
the swish and sigh of darkness against the blankets
the brush of air on my skin
the breath that will be let out at dawn.