C L Bledsoe

C L Bledsoe

The Night

The night is blonde. The night gets lost

in a phone booth and has to smell its way

out. The night is afraid of the taste

of its father’s voice. Crickets echo

the immensity of its loss: they are, all of them,

broken-hearted and dumb from the effort

of trying to reach the other side and rest.

But the night won’t lay still long enough

to let you sleep. It snores in your ear.

It farts and drives you to open a complaining

window. This is why sleep is for the young.

The idealistic youth can ignore the smell.

The gray pool of limbo outside will become

familiar, in the deadliest sense. It will lump

beside you, denting the bed, smelling of ointment.

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