Night crawls like lizards
with tongues of opalescent horror

Sleep is a blanket on someone else's bed

and I jolt and gasp like she had

connected by that plastic tube
to a life finally withdrawn

Sleep is torn from my lungs which choke on fears that close around me as coal dust

and all I see in the dark are the
worst things she suffered

from cancer's tongues of horror

Then radiance reaches from your woken soul and you recite Quran over me
like a Southern faith healer

with laying on of hands

They slither away from the light you've conjured and I sleep oh I sleep

Daylight memories appear as camera flashes

petty poltergeists easily banished

Yet darkness always follows day as an anxious housemaid

Memories slip their skins and crawl from discarded scales again where they shouldn't