Sometimes as I
wait for sleep to come,
I pack up my thoughts and drop them into
other people's bedrooms--
friends, family, the kid I sat behind in class
I try to picture them in bed
Curled up? Lying flat?
Reading by pearly light or
trying in vain to undo today?
The man at the grocery store,
the girl on the bike with the yellow streamers,
the voice on the radio--
I don't know them.
Not even the classmates I've
labeled in my brain--
I can barely see into them, no clearer than
the nighttime outline of my familiar furniture.
Yet all these people lie in darkness now;
what is it that keeps them up?
I want to know who they are in the dark moments.
When the daily happenings--
people, mealtimes, work--
when they all fade into what was,
what parts of them linger?
What do they worry about and
what one hope do they
wait for sleep to come,
I pack up my thoughts and drop them into
other people's bedrooms--
friends, family, the kid I sat behind in class
I try to picture them in bed
Curled up? Lying flat?
Reading by pearly light or
trying in vain to undo today?
The man at the grocery store,
the girl on the bike with the yellow streamers,
the voice on the radio--
I don't know them.
Not even the classmates I've
labeled in my brain--
I can barely see into them, no clearer than
the nighttime outline of my familiar furniture.
Yet all these people lie in darkness now;
what is it that keeps them up?
I want to know who they are in the dark moments.
When the daily happenings--
people, mealtimes, work--
when they all fade into what was,
what parts of them linger?
What do they worry about and
what one hope do they