Insomnia's Bite

“…thrown on a treadmill of unease, hour after hour of tossing and turning until I was weeping for rest.”     Derek Jarman in MODERN NATURE

Countless grays smother the night.
I slip into anxious dream, slip halfway out, teeter,
grudgingly open a book, aiming
at distraction. The green lamp is angled
to a pool of boiled yellow.
I ignore time or try, dismiss the pattern,
tomorrow and the ever-afters. I become
a child huddled in blankets, invisible.
This is an old wish. I avert my eyes
from the photos by the bed.
The burden of loss has left me a small, hard stone.
I gobble each hour, each papery moth
that hunts for light.

Mercedes Lawry’s most recent book is Small Measures from ELJ Editions. She’s also published Vestiges from Kelsay Books, three chapbooks and poems in journals such as Nimrod and Alaska Quarterly Review. Additionally, she’s published short fiction and stories and poems for children.