Sleep. Breathe. Dream.

For my creative writing class this semester, we had to write a short sonnet sequence. They don't have traditional rhyme or meter, but here they are. I'm tentatively calling them Sleeping Sonnets, for lack of a more fitting title. Let me know what you think.

I

I’ve wandered to a psychedelic dream
where every expectation is denied
and set upside-down again
and again in hushed reversal.

Your name was not your name.
Your eyes were not your eyes.
Your life was not your life.
Your soul was not your soul.

As I sleep and listen to your quiet, soft, unhurried breath
and I wander through my dreams beside you,
listening behind and back
for whispered answers,

I know in swirls of living color,
that none of this was meant to be expected.


II

Not listening for your sleeping breath
it intrudes upon my dreams without permission.
Blending with the swirling colors of my restless sleep,
I begin to hear the subtle sounds of you beside me.

You’re the open secret I’ve been keeping in my dreams
as you wander where I would have you not.
Finding deep, dark crevasses
where you find everything you need to know again.

Your beating heart joins your sleeping breath
in my distant memories of here and now.
Your quiet rhythms shift the pulse of my dreams
in this close and secret room of technicolor visions.

Nothing in the night, and nothing in my dreams
will ever sound the same again.


III

Over and over,
I look over at you
to find you only sleeping
and I listen for your tired breath.

I wonder what it is
that makes me listen so intently
for the quiet words
that will not come.

The beating heart
and the sleeping breath
of your peaceful body
wash over my waking brain.

You pull me towards you as you slumber
and draw me from insomnia again.