What Happens When You're Sleeping by Kumiko Mae

Tweet

When it's quiet I hear
myself break from
the inside.
It is a ballet,
a painful flex
running across my limbs
an arc disfiguring
my back. How it vibrates
on a still unslept bed.
 
It is gurgling water
in which my tongue awaits
your name
to form from nowhere
a ghost that dictates;
but never arrives. You stay
in your sleep
while I sink
deeply awakened
by the hope and need
to hope some more.

When it's quiet
I fold like
scraps of paper being burnt
by a weak candle,
not even lighting a room,
until my ashes are blown
unto your feet
where you're open. When you rise
from the slumber that stole
you from me
where imaginary keeps you
captive and drugged
by togetherness only clouds
will understand. I scratch
and etch myself
in that still second,
where the moon is glass
and the night is only broken
by a silence
put to rest
by your demons
in your head,
my bible of truths,
You
by your yawn
or an alarming jerk
that would trigger
my gun.