November 3
Dessa Bayrock
It starts with the worst sleep of your life,
which you'd forgotten was possible:
dreams like a smashed tail light, everywhere
and nowhere, and sharp. You're in a game show,
a prison, a cruise ship, walking down the street
of your childhood home. The coffee maker gurgles to life at 5 a.m.
and the new downstairs tenant has left her bathroom fan on:
a sound you realise you loathe, like anything you can't control.
There's no soap in the shower; you can't put your finger on joy.
You keep thinking of last night: a stranger's face in the dark,
happiness swimming like a fish between you, his knees
poking out of the water like the mountains you miss
(and maybe, just to yourself, you wish
you'd never left them for this alien city
and the worst sleep of your life.)