My soul had become so tired

ragged

but my body could never catch up.

 

I sat awake,

laid in beds staring

at ceilings that did not mean anything

even with the shapes I imagined dancing.

 

There were occasionally figures dancing

on the ceiling with the brutal brush strokes

but also in the corner of my eyes

but when I turned

you were gone.

 

Life can hurt you when you are laying around

in the quiet and isolated moments

where no one is being touched or touching you

and there’s too much gravity to get comfortable.

 

Bukowski spoke of his soul dropping

down through the mattress,

but maybe if it was just a soul

I would cut my losses and move on without it.

 

It wasn’t just a soul being left behind

and there wasn’t a mattress expensive enough

to lull this tired mind

and worn-out body

into dream’s clutches.

 

The condo echoed the ticking, broken clock,

a casualty of one of my latest good memories,

and the condo snapped awake with heat against

an uncharacteristically chilly St. John’s evening.

 

The place had no apt defenses to the cold

just as I had found myself savaged not long ago

because the cold of places and especially of people

has a way of taking us by surprise.

 

The frost sneaks up around your

walls of trust and respect

and bites at whatever it can touch

and unfortunately

we let it into the most tender and

intimate

areas.

 

I wasn’t sure if the scars had accumulated too much,

the real pain of all of these open woulds stung too much

or the phantom pain of everything lost and still felt

was the culprit,

but sleep remained elusive nonetheless.

 

The reason doesn’t matter,

because humans aren’t built on rationality,

not at our deep and tender levels,

and that’s where all the real danger was.

 

There were many ghosts that became my friends

even though they prevented me from sleeping

and there was a white elephant in the room that

I wasn’t going to talk about anymore.