Between my first and second sleep,
stars looked impoverished in my window.
I made coffee and watched the streets.
In my first, I’d been sick, laid low
in dreams of melancholy, ablaze
with guilt for melancholy’s sorrow.
I was a poor dim world dispraised:
a purple bloodstain marked my brow.
Between my first and second sleep,
my book told me this: love and wrath,
hope, faith, and jealousy enchant
life’s rank unreasonable path.
I’m a believer. I know how to wait.
The window ran with winter rain
that infuriated and tapped my pulse.
Rain said: worlds change and change.
In my second sleep, I didn’t dream.
When I woke I had a memory
of being free, somehow: it seemed
too real. I’d blended with the sky.
After my two faint sleeps, I felt
I’d lost a week. O my stardust,
carbon soul, time’s an insult,
a grievance given to us, in trust.
Between my first and second sleep,
I write lines to delay the day, to calm
my spirit tantrums, weep, or tweak
desires that still sing me like psalms.