11:11

11:11

Beds are so cold at that spot by your feet when
you wake up too early in the dark before the sunrise.

A little girl imagined that

beneath her blankets she was safe

from the skeleton monsters who creaked

and peaked inside her bedroom door.

I can’t get back to sleep while the light outside of
my eyelids is turning blue. The ceiling fan blades on pause.

I never notice how stale my breath might be because my
nose is crisped like grass on the first day of winter.

Best friends can sleep on the carpet floor

and don’t mind so much if there is

a lack of pillows or space.

Alarm clocks become birds on Saturday mornings.

Zebra stripes of yellow move across the wall; shut my eyes -
close the blinds. Bury my buzzing head like an ostrich underground.

Forced dreams fill up with jackhammers and the shooOOOoosh of cars.
White and black commercial fuzz raining inside televisions left along highways.

Slow for the working man constructing destruction. You can’t complain; you
pass this way every day as I sleep beneath graffiti bridges.

Women learn to enjoy the smells and stickyness

that come with being held late in the night.

Never really sleeping, pretending, who needs the abyss

of limitless space when you can be kept so close instead.

Fighting the light until my eyes open to blackness once again.
Red circles read 11:11; I wish I had never met you.