In the dark when you cannot see well
and squint futile
shadows take on recollection
you are, again, that child
wide-eyed and awake in night
seeing monsters configure themselves
at the foot of your bed
and maybe
climb on in.
Time is definitely female
a circle and not a line
she curves backward
like a hungry snake
devouring her tail
she dives forward
impulsively, unknowingly
as if she too
is unseeing.
Though decades pass
we speak still in the dark
in the voice of a child
surging from within us
bile, relief, sweet, salty, sticky fingers
eating the last of childhood
forbidden to those who
no longer grow upward
only inward, if they are
lucky.
I have lain in many beds
with lovers, sometimes alone
standing in, for absent friends
memory like a scar, whispers
near and far, recollection a drumbeat
solace in stillness, the cliff you walk to
without seeing its drop.
It always scared me to hear
the sounds of night dance around me
in abandonment
though more than anything I wished
to join in
their unseeing merriment
as if by releasing my fear I could
inhabit a deeper rest.
TheFeatheredSleep 