Laura Hershey

INSOMNIA

While you sleep, I stir
the stew of our late night spat,
polish a pea of gravel stuck
in our sock-like fit.
I wail, rail at you
to rewrite the fight, dislodge the grudge
with tender apology.
On your side, sleep has already
softened the stone to nothingness
but I hold tight to hurt
slicking it to pearl.

While you sleep, I stir
the rain-lush scent of lust satisfied
that's left me wide
open and astonished;
your soft breath-gusts
brush my upper arm,
replay our rhythm.
It's lullaby to you;
to me it's hullabaloo.

This is how we lie sleeping,
or waiting for sleep:
on your right side, my left;
arm over back, cheek under hand,
elbow against wrist, pulses joined,
a soft throb of connection that will last
until you turn over, or I do.

This is how we live: sleeping
seals the deals we make by light;
we neighbor our enfleshed bones
like poems bound by pages.

While you sleep, I stir
those pages, and imagine poems uncollected.
I keep awake, keep us alive.

* * *

STICKY HISTORY

Bits of history stick
to me: ragged, tangled;
some soft as felt,
some lurid, vivid as orchid.
A biopsy clipped a wisp
of muscle from under my bicep babyfat;
my great-great-great-grandfather fought
against the Crown.
Five or six words spoken by a classmate
clatter along beside me, stuck and strumming my spokes.
My people's eviction
of proud sprawling families
from ancient birth-rightful lands
assured that ghost-flesh and echo-scrap would cling to me always.
Like asphalt stuck to my tires,
the inky smell of history fills my nostrils, gums my thinking,
a still-wet draft of what I do and don't remember.

* * *

FEAR OF SPEAKING

Fear of speaking
is like sinking
surprisingly quickly
through water
straight down
to the hard
blue floor:
Every instinct
urges Yell!

To implore seems natural.
To instruct feels crucial..
Body claims to know better
jaw clenched
lips tighter than a kiss
lungs locked in defiance
of their own hunger.

Sound depends on breath
breath requires air
air cannot be exchanged
for any other currency.

Silence equals death
the saying goes
but sometimes silence
is the price of life.

* "Insomnia " and "Sticky History" first appeared in Their Buoyant Bodies Respond and "Fear of Speaking" in Something Close to Beautiful, both published by Inglis House Poetry.

Laura Hershey was a Colorado-based poet and writer with a physical disability, spinal muscular atrophy. Her poems recently appeared in Gertrude, Shakespeare's Monkey Review, Trillium Literary Journal, and in the anthologies Fire in the Soul: 100 Poems for Human Rights and Their Buoyant Bodies Respond. She held an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.