Insomnia

I've only suffered from it a handful of times in my life. I'm more of a "stressed? sleep it off" sort of person. But...here's what happened one of those times:

Insomnia

Her shadow was her way of saying sorry,
atonement for the waking of a thousand damned car alarms.
It languished in the arid moth air of streetlights
and porchsteps and lonely spaces
where sleep-wrecked people came out to pray,
grasping at their half-dried hair, feeling torrid summer
sticking in their eyelashes.

In the bare city street, she wandered
alone, closed-mouthed and watching
for whatever might come out from the silence, whether it be sleep-matted,
craven, perverse, it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was the night that continued to hum,
the cicadas incessant and unfamiliar, the lamps that blacked out the stars,
the top edge of foot and toe caught in sidewalk grates.

As she wandered, her eyelids fell in a pantomime of sleep,
and she heard coyote howls from home, interrupted
by the prickling of her skin, the rush of the freeway,
the low loud angry murmur of the city’s insides, beating
itself forward with the cadence
of a drum gone mad, the spirits raging
in older cities under the pavement.

The streets grew narrower, darker, more understanding.
She walked red-eyed and alone, the starless sky sheltering
the humid air striking her palms
like so many minnows in a child’s river hand.
Her eyes opened, and the salt and mud of the sea hit
the thin wet flesh and formed itself wide and creeping and strong
against her homesick espresso mind.

~ Natalie Vestin

(refrain from stealing, and be blessed with good karma)