While My Lover Sleeps

 

 ...I cannot sleep.  I rise and wander but return

to the twin beds precarious

 

edge which she leaves

for me, the muscles of my shoulder and butt

clench to keep me up.

 

In her darkened apartment

which is somehow not dark at all, sounds

we could not have heard

 

hours ago come forth

in the silence we left behind, sounds

of endless electricity.

 

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

have been whining for us on REPEAT through

three plays of the CD. 

 

"Helpless" croons now.  I

glance over the heaps of tossed clothing

and sheets and a cat

 

and a dog which litter

the bedroom like the rubble of the Battle

of Brittain,

 

just like we litter the bed;

she angelic sleeps off the exertion

while I revel in the

 

glow she emmanates. I cannot rise,

I cannot act.  Dumbfound, I am held fast by golden

shackles:

 

the fine long hair

that waterfalls from her head and drapes

over the pillow and sticks

 

to my lips or whiskers,

the thin chain I remember almost biting off,

the warm flesh brushed and

 

polished by the filtered

moonlight, even in the recalled husky tones

of her voice when, while

 

my face was poised below her stomach,

she had said as if not for me to hear,

"I need you."

 

But it is not these things

which keep me awake. It is not for the tingling

numbness of the arm she sleeps

 

on that I do not sleep,

nor the steady rising and falling of the breast

under my hand, or the uneasy

 

way I balance on the edge

of the bed. I think it is for fear of falling,

to slip into the impenetrable

 

blackness under her bed, beneath

yet ever unreachable to her or, that

in taking ease and trusting fate

 

and sleeping I might awake in the cold

light to an empty bed, still clinging to the edge

and her part of the bed bowled,

 

solitary and still warm from

the passing of her.  Yes, it is fear of relaxing....