Three Poems

 

Sleeping in prison

They never turn the light off.
Never.
Do you understand never?
At first, it was impossible to sleep with the lights on.
Maybe it always was.
Maybe it's good.
I never had to sleep before

where I had to worry the person next to me could stab me to death.
I'd tape a book to my chest.
Wide open.
The pages on my stomach
so that the sweat in the night
would transfer the ink onto my skin.
It looked like an avant-garde tattoo by morning.

I don't why I thought they'd stab me right in the book.
I should have taped it to my neck.
No one stabbed me.
I never read the book.
It was a book to protect my stomach.
It wasn't a book I wanted to read.
The tape wore out.

I'd put the book so that half was down my pants
and half up to my stomach.
I always slept in my pants.
Now, I hate pants.
I live alone.
I won't wear pants all day.
It's hard for me to have the lights off.

There's a streetlight that comes through my window.
I have nightmares sometimes
where they slice my throat
and a book pours out.
I seriously have that nightmare.
This poem
is in that book.

 

Sleeping in the ambulance

I used to love to sleep in the ambulance.
God, I'd be out in seconds on that thing.
You could sleep on the gurney.
My partner never did it.
She always slept in the driver's seat.
I couldn't sleep in the driver's seat.
It felt like the steering wheel was choking you to death.
It made me claustrophobic.
It was a lot wider in the back chassis.

She told me, You know how many people
have died on that thing?
I was cuddled up on the gurney.
We had these little pillows for patients.
I grabbed three of them.
Three of them combined made one regular pillow,
except they were more slippery.
I didn't care.
She told me I was snoring.

She asked how I could be snoring
when I was lying on this thing
that was just covered in blood
a few hours ago.
I told her it's not covered in blood now.
She snores too.
I heard her.
It sounds like a little elf snoring.
Whoever she marries is lucky.

 

Sleeping when I was little

I had no idea how glorious it was.
I believed in vampires at the time.
I believed in ghosts.
I thought everything was real.
But I slept so beautifully.

My mother said I always looked
"like a little pup"
when I slept.
Like a dog?
She said, "no, you looked like

a little pup."
Is that a good thing?
"It's the best thing in the world,"
she said.
I tried to imagine me as a little dog.

It seemed weird.
I imagined me as this little cute dog
and, under the bed,
a million wolves,
a billion ghouls.