Lily

After Margaret Silano

So many of my pleasures relate to sleep, or preparing
to sleep, or dressing myself for sleep, or tricks for sleep.
I could sing to the modality of my loungewear with the sounds
of the sea as my accompaniment. For a while I was hopscotching
to sleep with a gummie, but the dreamlessness began to cost me.
Not anything I could put into words exactly, mostly a blankness.
I could tell I hadn't visited my subconscious for a very long time.
Something of that soullessness of missing your grandmother's visits.
How she called everybody honey, and it still felt sticky and brand new.
How she hugged you with a hankie up her sleeve. How she called it
a hankie. The absolute best is when sleep ambushes me like a little brother
with a slippery frog. I am horrified that I could sleep at such a moment,
but the frog joy is irresistible, and I know I have touched the bottom
of the riverbed when I can look up and read the undersides of lily pads.