I know you are sleeping, not slain. You whisper these days
Instead of shouting
Maybe what I actually hear
Is your snoring.
I know you are sleeping, not slain.
You whisper these days
Instead of shouting
Maybe what I actually hear
Is your snoring.
While you are sleeping
I am most awake.
I say good morning in a real voice
To real people
And I mean it,
It is a good morning
I smile, refreshed
Because with you hushed,
With my hand on the mute button
I sleep the sleep of a well person.
You woke in me when I was 23
Though perhaps you yawned
Open in my teens.
Everyone I know has heard inner
Voices of self scolding, chatter of negatives
But you, my illness
You are all those tiny voices
With a megaphone.
You produce movies in my mind
Stereophonic hated with no off switch.
Your onset woke me to nightmares
And made my real sense of me
Sleep.
Illness, hear me:
I am not you!
I am in spite of you.
All right, sometimes I am because of you.
Though I can't cut
Myself apart from you, I can
Live from my core awake being.
While you sleep on
I awake and rise, real.
Margalea Warner writes from Coralville IA where she is part of a Mennonite congregation.