It was easier when I slept
on a narrow bed between a rock and a hard place -
in those weeks I knew
what should keep me awake until the peach-bright hours of impossible desert morning,
knew how to walk to make my steps echo yours.
But this burnt orange cloud
where I -
restless -
deposit my head
soaks up the fodder for painful dreams
and leaves me to lie awake
miraged
til the relentless hours of fever-tinted black dawn,
when the slope away from you
is slick, white,
and ever more familiar
