Oh, How I Wish Slumber Came Easy

Prose Poetry

Sprinkle your eyes with sand, lovely, and let the dreams take flight.

(Oh, will you be there to chase the nightmare away? With your invisible sword and shield? Or are you a battalion dressed in the ways of knights from long ago?)

They tell us to map our dreams out in journals and see the trails they take. But what if sleep evades, like a trickster or shape-shifter ducking in and out of being?

(Will you be there to hold my hand when the night terrors persist? Even when I throw my hands out, ready to claw away at anything that might harm me? Will you be able to resist the urge to wake me from the throes of such nightly peril? No? I didn’t think so.)

Those faraway days when sleep was a fancy — I miss it, the ease of it, the fall into the mattress and back against the waiting pillows. It felt like a voyage where all you needed to do was make sure the blanket was warm enough.

(I don’t like to think of the many who have never known a sleep of comfort.)

The dreams themselves flit in and out, butterflies finding their places to land, but I don’t try to catch any of them anymore — even the ones that stay till I grasp the edge of waking.