Tonight Every Now

I like to stay awake when the whole world has gone asleep:
when someone shuts off the night lamp
and the blanket has been tugged
to a chin and the shrug of
contentment slings the dreamer over the cool smooth slide
of the pillow.
When the sleeper sinks into silence.
When the dust bins settle with a final rattle from afar,
as the tomcat
slinks away.

I like to stay awake and feel the city settle around me
unheeded. Unmindful of my affairs.
Astoundingly quiet
like a sunrise.
I like to stay awake and inhale the breath of a
million festive exhalations, watch the eyelids
of the dreaming flutter slightly out of control.
I like to stay awake and start counting the seconds
as they flicker by
inconsequential and
irreplaceable.

I like to stay awake and feel the weight of things
of blankets, of worlds,
of the day tomorrow
of my lids
slowly suspending each moment
in sightlessness —
until the night drops its jaw and yawns a yawn
so gaping even from afar and I
slip into the mouth of it, the utter
wordless blackness of it,
the sparseness of it,
until I
until I
slip.