We all look like children when we sleep.
I call it the fastest benjamin buttoning you’ll ever see.
Our faces tell stories we fight to hide in daylight,
but sleep always finds us, even when sleep itself is an escape.
It’s late and I’m sharing a bed wide enough to fit my mom, dad, and I,
but not enough to share the blanket, the warmth.
Nights are always the loneliest.
My mom rests her head on her arm like a perched bird,
neck curled in on itself in surrender, but even in her sleep she fights.
Her brows rests in a furrow and I wonder what keeps her from finding peace.
My dad is at the far end of the bed from me,
but the sound of his snores still reach me.
He is a factory, his large hands calloused and clenched in a knuckle.
My dad and his hands know hard work,
know even better how to hold onto things,
too often far too long or far too close,
but when you have lost a lot, you learn how to hang on.
He heaves a sputtered breath, exhale ungiving,
like it takes a whole line of dusty men to even let go of air.
I can’t sleep, restless.
Mostly because I took a nap that afternoon, maybe something else.
I think about dreams and how they’re always telling me something,
usually things I already know but too afraid to say aloud.
In the dark, there is courage to speak truth.
It rests hungrily on the tongue,
for even gruesome, unsettling, lonely things want to be heard.
What do you see when you close your eyes?
When I have exhausted my dreams,
like estranged lovers who have settled for one another,
sleep and I make our way to each other,
and I fall asleep.
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