You left without a word - no goodbyes nor hints when you’d allow me again to savor that restful slumber with a thousand snores. When was that last time I slept so well? You just left. Nothing said. Nothing.

As hardly as you set off the ticking clock and made me wait for you to sniff the consciousness out of my head, while I count stars so bright or dolly sheep after sheep so white, so was the speed of your departure. I haven’t even had the luxury of precious minutes to ask whether the sheep I was counting had any wool and was there anything wrong with being black for a sheep, and I was too shy to ask the twinkling stars what they really are.

Like a quick scene in this melancholic one-act play in this old stage in the silent theater of memory recalls or the soft fragrance of white lacunosa wax plants on moonlit nights, I hear a loving mother tell her young son to pause his game and take the afternoon siesta on the mat spread on the cool bamboo floor relaxing amidst the dry days of the Lenten season. He just feigned asleep, eyes closed and then open again. I must be dreaming. How I wish I could tell him to relish sleep. For now I want sleep, even without dreaming. Even without dreams. But sleep seems so hard to get.

Sleep has become an elusive dream.

You’re like a ghost, whatever that is, lurking behind
the dark bushes and blending with the unusually eerie
silence of a brook in one ancient forest.

The seemingly serene scene rolls
and in the refreshingly cool waters,
a harmless creature slithers on its way
to sip and hydrate itself after the tiring day
of foraging in the lush canopy.

Then from one corner near a thick bamboo clump
the king of serpents surprisingly strikes. The gentle slitherer
is maimed and swallowed whole from head to tail.

Yes, you’re like the mythical ghost
that constantly makes me too afraid to go back to sleep.
As I descend through the mental labyrinth,
you suddenly sound some siren at the back of my ears,
just like a firetruck that warns the crawling traffic
to get out of its way along the main thoroughfare.
By the dreaded time your paralysing whispers reach
my shoulders, I’m reduced to nothing but frozen meat -
no way out but to moan aloud as I grasp
at collapsing threads of the delicate rope of life.

I am the helpless, hopeless, hapless victim
desperately seeking priceless sleep elusive
and which you always ruin as soon as I catch
a rare one.

By stroke of Lady Luck, fate wakes me up
and I’m in the middle of a dark midnight
of nowhere. Tired, gasping for precious air,
I murmured the fifth of the Seven Last Words:
"I thirst." Water! Water!

Yes, you're like a ghost, the mythical ghost.
I'm not even sure - do you deserve
to be the inspiration of awakened verses?
And I'm not even sure either - is this really a poem?

Maybe. Maybe Life is but a dream
and Poetry helps me keep one thing
more precious - my Sanity.