You remember as a child the long road trips that would briefly
turn you green with sickness til you rested your head
against the vibrating window,
til you found a rhythm, and you stayed.
You feel like that now, spinning slightly out of your own orbit
like a planet that’s spent a quarter of its life trying to find the way home.
Some seasons the rain falls harder than others.
And you think to yourself, enough of this.
Enough of this monsoon.
You want to live again in the shadow that was once your life,
the shadow that involved a second shadow
who was the other person in the life that was once your life,
the other person whose warm body encircled yours like a marriage ring.
How hard it is to fall asleep
when the only one you want to fall asleep with
is falling asleep alone.
On the news the weather forecaster recalls some ages-old story
of a tornado that carried a woman and her pet bird
forty miles across the state of Oklahoma before dropping her off safely
at her former husband’s front doorstep.
And you think to yourself, if only
the only one you want to fall asleep with
could be dropped off in your bed like that.
How intimate that would be, how beautiful,
like finding someone else’s hair
in your bathroom sink.
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Relearning How to Sleep Alone
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