Lines That Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep

You remember when you were young

And you held the night in the palms of your hands

In the lines on the insides of your fingers

And in the creases of your elbows

Sometimes you can still sense little bits of it, there,

Hanging,

Threads of starlight and midnight city air stuck

Under your nails and behind your ears

But when you look in the mirror

It’s a grown-up who looks back,

Haggard, adult,

A woman whose circles under her eyes tell more

Than her cracked lips ever could.

By Betsy Jacobson, 6.2.2011

In Which I've Lit a Candle And Am Now Listening to Amanda Palmer.

she's the one who can't lie worth a damn,
and that's really what matters here,
so forgetting never lasts long enough for her

she's the kind of girl who needs to feel
to talk it through and write it down and let it out
clear the air or smoke it up

but she isn't the one who slams percussive screams
to the other kindly ones and
she's not the one who lives in the walls
and eats them from the inside out and
she's tried and couldn't use it in her art

but she's really very good at feeling
and no one can talk quite as much as her.

In Which I Am Overwhelmed, and Also There Are Probably Mice Nesting In My Mattress.

Something is gnawing

and I don't mean in some intangible
cry-it-out feelings kind of way

I mean, really, gnawing
chewing at my bed frame or my wall
and I can't see what it is

but I think it's probably mice

but since I did bring them up
let's talk about feelings
and how much they are like mice

how they nest
how they scrittle around, hidden
how they run out at unexpected or inopportune moments
how they breed so quickly
and how cats can sometimes chase them away and

how it would be so much easier to sleep

without this incessant
gnawing.