Awake

You were the one keeping me from wake

As I slept,

your pillowed hair spread

across the skin above my aching chest

and broke my lungs in two

so that I couldn’t just suffer

from long term

asthma,

but that

my voice shook

everytime I spoke a word

that I wrote which felt

familiar to my tongue.

I bite down,

like it stings,

on the edge

of where thoughts

tremble out

and fall

onto solid table and paper and pen

instead of where they once believed they would reside.

When winter mouth veins

reach gray lines of work

they seem to soak

like edges,

attempting to raise

a fallen wood back

from death,

spit,

down,

onto a speaker’s face.

Water can never ease

a pain

so speak up

in the bottom

of one’s throat

God where even is that?

So let my nails dig in

while I choke on

words evenly written

but horribly pronounced-

they cannot hear a shaking song

from a side of the room

in which ink doesn’t rise.

You kept me from waking:

from pain never spoken nor taken

God why do my words shake?

They fall out irregularly

like tongue twisters

or misplaced letters

in my own book.

I cannot

stumble

or trip

over something

I wish was never

put on the ground.

You keep me

from falling asleep

against sound waves,

distorted

in only

my ears.