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.  

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First Publication: White Stag Literary Journal, Volume IV, Issue I, Ghost Motel, 2017