Pillow Talk

Not the kind you're thinking of

I have an armchair where I perch, eyes to the trees, nestled in a cocoon of thought. This is where I do much of my writing. Sometimes, though, I am gripped by a phrase in the limbo before sleep, or in the midst of an otherwise mundane nighttime journal. Time evaporates in those moments, and the ink of my favorite green pen is a fountain, spitting up words fast and slow as they come; that I may jostle the inky pen onto my ivory sheets is only a dim concern. I love these moments of nocturnal inspiration, the glow in my room slowly reduced to the warming light of a bedside lamp, clean pages heavy under weight of freshly hewn words.

This short poem was one of those evening endeavors, crafted while the sky darkened and my morning alarm lay wearily by. Read on below.

Full moon at dusk after an evening hike in Portland

Pillow Talk

I let my words into bed with me,
Like the warmth of another body
But more liquid.

They swim in my head and pool onto the page
Til the white space is mostly gone.

The words, they link arms, 
Become memories, corporal. 

A chain nudged off a table, 
They slink faster and faster,
Recoiling somewhere far below.

My chest heaves with the labor of this birth.
I hope it’s born with ten fingers and toes,
Can stand on its own,
Will one day make someone hum with the intimacy of recognition.

But my words,
I leave them on the page to hatch, and sometimes - 
Sometimes they live to catch a current and go off on their own,
No longer mine,
I’m so proud.

I love the beached ones, too.
The ones that get stuck in the sand and don’t quite make it.

Don’t always know what will be,
Just know my bed is now dripping with words,
Staining my sheets,
They cling to me when I rise.