It stills itself around me
somewhere between the pureness of light
and the opposite of arrival,
wound by its own losses.
I am the physical moment
it reacts to with lethargy,
opaque, without radiance,
measuring the distance it keeps
like an insecure lover.

Waking should not be so difficult,
but it has grown premature with time,
and I can no longer remember my dreams.
They are just fragments of circumstances,
emotional instances visualized haphazardly
when they used to rise and move
underneath all that sustains me.

I breathe and think of a color
with no name or place, one
suited for my state of mind.
I breathe and hear a child running
above me, one with no knowledge
of my existence.
I breathe and watch my dog sleep
and sleep at my feet.