She sits up at night
Moon makes her restless 
and beds give her nightmares, says.
So she smokes with the blade by the door.
Her feet dangle gingerly, 
flirting with the dark circles under her eyes.
'Babe, come to bed. You don't have to fight no more.'
A tired smile and iron grip,
hard earned and hard lost since the war.
'Sure, just a few more minutes,' says. 
It's been weeks since I heard you at my door.

She flirts with an abyss: 
she lives the breathing dream.
gills for ether in the ethereal, though,
well,
it pulls her apart at the seams.
Hastily stitched and stretched
and torn, underneath wet skins, worn
overtop the looking glass, but still,
I beg to have you back.

Til dawn takes you by mistake
and she drifts away in the morning wake.
another night spreads us thin, dark and desperate. 
Another torture to unfurl.
We hurt each other, but I asked you first, she says 'no,'
I say 'that's my girl.'

I remember a lot of nights I'd spend laying on my back, finding pictures in the abstract of the stucco on my ceiling, breathing in the sounds and damp asphalt air of the city. Its teeth, if it's got any, are bared through my naked unbarred windows, and as I lay awake I wonder how I used to wonder if this was all life was going to be. Now, I wonder if this is too much: to press in close, filling my lungs with brown sugar and sweet, familiar sweat. To fill my ears with crickets and whispers: secrets disclosed at the nape of my neck. 
I'm simple, full of simple things that I fear my heart might spill over the floor, figured out in public -- that whatever mystery holding it all together would dissolve in a quantum collapse.

But for now, I don't question a damn thing. I wouldn't find sleep any other way.