I’m dreamless these days,
most days.
I wake wearing my cement shoes.
Mornings add slip to the cement.
It is as I twilight
that the nightmares visit.
The roll-out of the a.m.
Insomniac stares.
I catch myself wandering in my cement shoes.
Woke again.
Light cracks through blackout shades.
The baby sleeps next to me.
Delicious.
Too old for mommy’s bed,
too young to know this much anxiety.
Woke again.
Still safe.
Still scared of the next part.
The sleeping baby is a mirror of me
yet to be.
Delicious, soft-cheeked.
A starfish
without weights
pulling her own weight
through her turn in the universe.
Mornings do not renew.
It is the plan yet again
in the safety of another dreamless night
to stay alive.
I hear breathing but no birdsong.
She is the music of morning
with her snorts and her sniffles.
Too old to be in mommy’s bed,
too young for all this anxiety.
