To Know Where

What happens when you pull an all-nighter or seven.

 

 

 

 

Only those who’ve felt it know.

Desiring that strongly to sleep,

But being unable to,

Is unlike any lack of food

or water, which you can locate

In your stomach or tongue.

 

Even loneliness can be found in the heart

And the throat,

But sleeplessness

Has no genesis to point to.

 

It’s a hunger that exists outside of you,

Somewhere in front of your head.

And down,

It lowers away

When you try to tilt to it.

Always

Just

Below your nose.

 

I reached my hunger last night, however,

After a week. All of me

Left

As if by a sneeze

From my whole

  Body.

I dreamed we were kids, which is weird,

Because we didn’t know each other yet,

But we did there.

 

I knew somehow you’d promised earlier

To come over and I guess play with Legos or some s**t,

But you didn’t.

 

 

I wasn’t quite brave or insane enough

To press myself to the portrait window, so

I stood back,

Kind of shamefully,

And watched for you through glass.

 

Outside it was summer, and the sun

Was like seeing a lamp from below its shade,

Making everything grainy and kind of electric.

 

Inside, the sun was like the water heater flame

In our old apartment,

You know,

When nobody had been home in a while,

Out of sight but throwing orange everywhere.

 

 

The light was flickering like that through a tree,

And at my height, at that angle,

It seemed so much heavier,

Like I could breathe it and burn my sinuses

With energy.

 

It was intoxicating and I got lost in it, but I remember something strange.

It woke me:

Even at that age, I knew there was a pilot light

Somewhere in me you had lit.

Even at that age, I knew to reach through my ribs to make a fist

And extinguish it.