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 Drank The Rest of My Rum When I Got Home And Now I'm Lonely.

burn, baby, flow
down my throat
to my
lungs, into my
solar plexus where you'll
sit for awhile, liquid glow,
amber and
intense,
before you'll fall
drop
by
drop,
lower, down, lower,
and
longing .

In Which I Just Took Melatonin So This Might Make No Sense.

lovers dance in words
amongst the stars,
over living hills
and
into the dreams of the
crumpled and the dry,
lost, or old,
the lonely or
just alone in a bed,
fifty miles
or a tank of gas
and two or so hours
away from
the one whose sleepy sighs
are peace enough on
most nights.