At Odds & Loose Ends: A poetry Collection

In Admitting Defeat

Those nightmares, you know the ones;

give me choice tickets for dark circles

and standing at the window sill

weeping past frosted glass

and wishing the street lights weren't orange

Those dreams are impossible to explain

but I feel them all over my body,

squeezing like the urticaria in my hands

stinging just the same, and the cold

doesn't bother me then

I'm reminded in the chill of crime ridden nights

that God no longer exists

and maybe he never did, but it used

to mean something when someone said

they loved me. Wednesday's in particular,

but that was a long, long time ago

I have been many things since my 'God times'

A daughter, a sister, and more recently, a son

but like those dreams, when the sun comes up

I never recognize this person I have made,

and worse, in my mother's voice I grumbled

about grades, therapy sessions and brief grace periods.

When I wake from those barely fictitious dreams

and find my body again, I am shaking the sweat out of my hair

and unable to sleep again. I'm caught in the whimsy

of whatever had tripped me behind my eyes

and hoping that tomorrow night, when the glow stars fade

and the medication settles, that my bandaids will have faces that I recognize.