Goose-down Terrors
A black knot twists under covers
like someone I used to know.
Hard to swallow, solid. Whatever’s in
my gut is counted in folds,
mucous membrane, edgeless decades
of dead that finally found me.
In the street-lit room I pace, panic through
sheets of spider silk. It is the endless
nothing I can’t stop. God, take away this
skin scratch. My dog, sleeping in a corner
stomps snakes after a third turn
clockwise. – There are no comforts
in languages of twitch and dream. Repeated
cries, high pitched yips, don’t
amuse or calm. My eyelid has a tic
to top that field mouse dream. Wide awake,
I shake. I’ve got a fist of hair, still connected
to silver scalp. I can’t lie down in this disheveled
bed, where no one wakes. Sweated sheets wind
in cold puddling, the shape of a sleepless body.
Goose-down terrors drip damp, fluttering
big things shift beneath a blanket.
First Publication: White Stag Literary Journal, Volume IV, Issue I, Ghost Motel, 2017
