What is the music that will get me out of bed?
What can draw me from my anxious sleep?
Are there melodies in this world that can do that to me?
Bach? or soul? Or songs chosen for me by my beau?
None of that was made for this mode,
none of this knew of me
or will,
and none of this will know
I can’t sleep till after two
or that the sound of my alarm itself is a nightmare.
Everything is a nightmare.
Sylvia always said, and said everywhere, that everything
is a nightmare. It is. It’s true.
The roof of my mouth hurts.
My feet are oddly cold.
The shirt I slept in has snot on it.
My bed has swallowed my
one sheet of tissue paper that was
supposed to do its job.
My bed. This bed. Unfit bed. One mattress
sitting misshapenly upon the other like
two things that just don’t belong together,
just the right spot to catch my nightmares,
catch my sweat, and the three thought that
come to me in the hour before I wake up.
It is here I lie when I don’t want to leave.
It is here I lie for the rest of the day.
Here I sink into till it is all over,
spend my years in silence
until my long-rotten flesh is found by some poor soul
who was supposed to take over this room.
“That palimpsest!” I say, like it’s an insult.
It is. especially if they don’t understand
what I’m saying. It is.
Well, now I can build tales all I want.
It’s what I do, from this high throne too comfortable to get off of.
I sit in my sweat and my nightmares and my snot.
I sit in last night’s clothes,
with my feet still oddly cold,
and wait for some wind to take me over,
still undecided on what songs to sing
along to in the shower, and as I run my other tasks.
In all this, now
at least I am up.
today,
and tomorrow,
and again,
and again,
and again,
until one unsunny day
when it won’t be
a responsibility of mine,
this perilous responsibility,
and I will lie in bed
like my grandfather did
a day before they took him away.