Midnight falls in sandbags on my chest,
piano covers of old favorites reverberating
past the old grandfather clock as it chimes:

Open your eyes.

I am sleepless on the living room carpet,
knees held against ribs once broken, healed
wrong--bones bent too close around a heart
prevented from growing the way dandelions
spring again and again from beneath mower
blades spinning, cutting the lawn once a week,

sunshine blooms stubborn as my stifling ribs.
And my persisting heart. Emily Dickinson once
claimed: “hope is the thing with feathers,” yet
my chest aches with the weight of it’s elephant
existence bearing down as the moon travels
slow across an expanse of flickering stars

too endless for small minds to comprehend--
and it’s all so much and so present that I can’t
help biting my nails at the importance of hopes,
wondering how they’d fare on a scale,
countered against infinity itself.