3 of 30

after a surfeit of sleeplessness, i am
hollow as bird's bones, a calliope of reeds
a stagnant pool of undreaing,
black as mirrorback,

i have stood guard over you,
your hands closing in fists
still clutching the magazine
where you read your wide-awake nightmare

I am splintered and combustible,
when you start away
I am skinned and dressed,
my eyes are rotten chokecherries, ignored by birds

you think me indolent, luxurious,
thoughtless to rattle and scrape beside your sleeping
every night of the last six i have awoken,
starless, dreamless, my mask broken in my hands

I sleep a shallow drowning,
cold vigil over you, these bulbs in frozen ground
the boy playing solitaire
every greasy card of his resentment
my head with a sword through it

your nightmare comes to me, not in dreaming
a man without a face, the fattened birds, a dry and terrible place