My throat is dry [ ] a drowsy numbness pains [ ] my sense as though [ ] obscured by smoke [ ] I drive on roads dividing patchwork farmland, fences [ ] wide-eyed llamas [ ] perpetual surprise [ ] after a dream, I sip water in the dark [ ] I don’t want to sleep [ ] my husband breathing deeply [ ] my children twisting in their beds [ ] smoke rising from the fields [ ] end of harvest razing [ ] I lift the rock, find a family of woodlice [ ] curled away from me [ ] sleeping or pretending to sleep [ ] hemlock lacing the road’s shoulders [ ] my too-dry eyes [ ] the tender babies are paler [ ] than their parents, little ghosts [ ] rolled in on themselves, my children are sleeping [ ] when I lift the blanket [ ] when, after a dream, I smoke in the dark [ ] no bird singing [ ] nothing to ode [ ] the sharp scent of pine, wet soil, beast musk, rain [ ] the dull opiate of things [ ] what will outlive us [ ] I turn on the screen [ ] a panel of men in a void, screaming [ ] cornflowers curling into rust [ ] I breathe in smoke [ ] fists curled shut [ ] the green of marijuana fields [ ] the pungent scent of [ ] bodies curled in sleep [ ] as if sleep were a cure [ ] one minute past, and Lethe-wards [ ] hear that crackling? [ ] pine cones dropping like heavy flames [ ] glaciers splitting [ ] howling ghosts [ ] what earth will be left for [ ] my children cry out in their sleep [ ] dark room filling with the smoke I exhale [ ] hills roiling [ ] the screaming stays while the screen goes dark [ ] I can’t see it disappearing [ ] to thy high requiem [ ] my throat is dry [ ] do I wake or sleep? [ ] I don’t want to wake
Copyright © 2020 by Danielle Cadena Deulen. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 4, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.