It was just a job.
Three years watching her through that machine.
And maybe a little part of me fell in love with her.
I recorded the words she spoke.
Even the ones that I knew she was speaking to me.
In the hours that she slept every night
I stood guard; thankful for the dreams that made her sigh
And angered at the monsters who threatened her.
Friends visited her and I ached to be one of them.
She went on dates with men who didn’t deserve her.
Cradled by pillow-top I sink
into the realm just this side of slumber.
In those last indistinguishable moments I recognize
the weight of his arm at my waist,
our hands clasped to my breast.
And the way his thigh rests between mine
I know that I am home.
I measure his breaths; by the brush
of his chest against my back;
until I know he is just as close to succumbing as I.
My unresisting mind goes under to the whisper-soft
exhalations in my ear.
And in my dreams my lover and I meet.
Crystal by crystal they fall,
Feelings in six-sided flakes.
Small, light powder floats down;
Joy, comfort, contentedness,
Settle at my feet.
As the clouds shift bringing darker horizons
Grief clings to guilt,
Anger melds to hurt,
And heavy, wet pieces build drifts against my spine.
Day to day the frozen precipitation falls,
Lying in bed at night I huddle beneath the covers.
Mommy always said that the monster under my bed wasn’t real;
So why do I have to bury my head under the pillow
To drown out the sound so late at night…
I hear it in the solitary creak of the single stair.
And the rustle of the curtain when the fan ceases to turn.
It can speak a thousand tension ridden nothings
Between one drop of an ice cube and another.
It keeps watch, with me as its prisoner, from the window sill.
The only evidence it was there is the pocket sized clink of Spots dog tags.
Little angel.
Laced lollipop.
Littered limericks.
Limp lecher.
642 Poems and More 