Sleepless

Sleep escapes me.

The sun rises.

I resist the urge to reach for a pill to bring on the cold, unfulfilling sleep of science.

Pain could be relieved.

Stress.

Can’t seem to close my eyes, under invisible duress.

Thoughts race, unbidden.

Voices from the past.

Chastisements, previously unheard.

What if I had?
What if instead..?

Circles and circles.

I am not OK!

I want to shout but it would fall on deaf ears.

Everyone so concerned with themselves.

Guilty of the same, I sit alone.

Memories, shattered and jagged.

Cutting like glass.

Blood, bright red and dripping.

Fading into a foreboding crimson.

Brown.

Fetid, stinking.

Putrid like my soul.

Streaks of ingratitude.

Moments forgotten, taken for granted.

A life lived.

For what?

Shame.

Regret.

Radio Silence

Do you wonder where I am?
What I did last Saturday?
Does it keep you awake late into the night?

I know it doesn’t for me.

With detached curiosity, I hope that you are moving on.

It’s going to hurt to see you with someone else.

I know and I am preparing myself, inside and out.

Everything she does, you will compare to me.

When she laughs, you’ll hear me.

At first.

It will all fade away.

If you just stay gone.

We can both move on.

I wrote a poem for you yesterday, then looked at it and wondered why

I want to flush you out of my system, like a poison or a drug.

I keep giving you this time, in my mind.

I need to move on but I stand still, in stagnant water.

It’s OK When I Do It

A day off of work

Time to get drunk

When I do it, it’s classy & well deserved.

I work Monday-Friday and this is what adults do on weekends.

When you do it, I judge you.

You work less.

It’s during the day.

It’s four times a week, sometimes three.

Double standard alert.

You turn into a poet.

I drink to quiet the words circling around my head like a hurricane of confusion.

We should compliment each other, figuratively & literally.

Instead we concede defeat.

We are each others favorite people.

What are we running from?

Ourselves, I think.

Confusing Dream

We were back in Okanogan for whatever reason, walking along Main Street. Yes, it’s really called that. It was dusk and we were holding hands when you stopped me and pointed up to the sky. There was a plane zooming around leaving a trail of letters in its wake, “Jerry loves Jessica” it said. Such a grand gesture from you was so unexpected, it took my breath away. We continued walking and turned right to go up the hill towards my Mom’s house in town.

We stopped abruptly when we saw an overturned red truck. You went to the driver’s side and I cautiously approached the passenger side. Sure enough, the driver was still inside. We looked at each other and communicated without any words that we had to help this man. You put your hands beneath his shoulders and pulled him out from the seat. He was conscious and scooted himself out to help you. It suddenly looked like he needed more space so you hoisted the car up so that the driver could stand. Just as he stood up tall, you lost your super human strength and dropped the truck. It smashed the man like a pancake and we knew instantly that he was dead. It was then that you revealed to me that this was the man who you paid to organize the sky-writing. What does this mean?