Twice this week upon
waking, I’ve found the bed frame
a good six inches from where it was
the night before.
There’s a black streak on the wall
marking its mysterious, scraping course.
I have no memory of movement to explain this,
but I suppose it’s possible
there’s violence to my tossing. If not violence, then
something else—maybe fear. My room in Prague
was small, trapezoidal, with one wall
that slanted from floor to ceiling,
a wall she watched me struggle against,
like Atlas, asleep but feverish and straining
under the weight, a heroic somnambulator
whose gift was unconsciousness
—an echo, perhaps, of wading out
into the moonlit lake
and being found, waist-deep in the glossy stillness,
still dreaming.
is an emerging writer whose poems are published in Grand Little Things, Analecta, Kingfisher, Modern Haiku, bottle rockets press, and Wales Haiku Journal, and are forthcoming in hedgerow, Presence, and contemporary haibun online. He will graduate in May 2022 from the MA English program at Indiana University, South Bend, where he lives with his wife, Megan.
