The late evening stillness changed the place into a mausoleum as sleep came

to all else. And how I wanted you there with me.

Abandoned, I walked down two halls of stone tile exhausted of their warmth and listened

into the bedroom. Light breathing and something lost in the walls or floors or ceiling.

The ambiguity of sounds kept the world moving and all objects within it.

Torn from this nature by restlessness,

I grew to hate the massive space

between all things only conceivable in the dark.

Each object, drifted in the infinite unseen, except for you and I.

The mound of covers preserved you from the slow stirring in the quiet,

while my mind resisted rest. And how I wanted you there with me.

Before sunrise, a nebulous fog formed in the air outside.

You still slept as a current of deep blue light flooded the room and bathed your form.

Coldly hands rush against stale hair and motion took your stillness if only for an instant.

It was then that the sounds of birds swept through the trees. Before the release from sleep, warrior alarms, crashing branches, and snare drum wings revolt against the waking world.

Torn from slumber in an obscene manner, they raged in violation of

nature.

I drew away from you as swells of shrills and whistles, songs

of panic threatened to breech the room.

Through the sunless riots, you remained unstirred, unknowing of the torment beyond the walls. And how I wanted you there with me.

To show you what happens behind the sun’s back. Things that can only be inflicted during the still hours when our minds turned inward.

Color warmed the air outside. The sun unlocked the sky,

and I decided to let you sleep.

 

Now on his final year as a student at Aims Community College. Active member of Creative Writing Club and Aims English Honor Society. Enjoys writing poetry and fiction. Lifelong reader, writer, and student.