Page 26 - HEF Pen & Ink 2022

A baby is crying. In the next room people are dying.
The blankets are stiff and thin. I lie
Beside your skin, soft and warm
And faintly wet. The room is sterile, white, alight.
My tears are wet and salty on my tongue. I’m not tired,
But the light goes out, so I sleep.
It evades you until I do, sleep.
Lighting the horizon, daylight is dying
In shortening patches on the floor. You are tired Of markers and crayons that lie
Underfoot and color the walls. A light
Always on in the dark to keep fears cold and dreams warm.
Nothing but the word is warm
As it rests upon my tongue. The dog whines in its sleep
On the rug in front of the fire that’s alight Against the creeping frost, yet dying
In the heavy, early dark. You lie
On the couch, always awake but always tired.
Spoken to ward off worried hands, “I’m just tired”,
But it’s hardly a whisper, and your forehead is too warm.
As the early sun rises, the grass will wet our feet with dew, so I lie,
When I meet your eyes. I talk of tomorrow and
hold your hand so you can sleep.
Your eyes never close though the morning still dawns. I didn’t know about dying,
But I saw the room lose a light.
My nerves are alight
With the spark in her eyes, never tired.
Don’t leave, she says, with the whisper of the rustling leaves, already dying,
And the sharpness of the west wind that rattles the windows, stealing the warm
Words from my lips and giving them to her hands and her skin. Sleep
Never takes me, though she falls fast into dream- ing. Dust makes the body a lie.
The soul still awake, like I. Grief whines but sounds lie.
Call them but windchimes, clink-clinging through the dark, alight
By the brush of the wind on a windless night. The air that grows tired
Of filling my lungs, that holds the dull, ringing rhythm of my heart. Sleep
and come see me in my dreams, under a sky the shade of dying.
My tired eyes ache to close under cold, rough blankets. Next to you again I lie.
Salty tears warm a drying path to my parted lips. A baby cries. A light
Goes out. The dying day recedes below the hori- zon. So I sleep.
We Begin With a Sense of the End By McCoy Vranka
24
By Lars Schei