Sleeping Arrangements

by Sarah Sousa

We communicate in our sleep
like plants, a fine filament spun between
two heavy pillows.
I respond to your heat. You,
to the content of my dreams.

The boys have been waking
three, four times a night just to check
that I am where they left me
to the side, or foot of their beds
like a doll. I acquiesce and sleep
on the floor between them.
Often, one or the other wakes in fear
saying, ‘mumma?’ I’m dredged
from my depths, shushing.

You’re left downstairs with the dog.
She’s a restless companion.
It’s all or nothing. She’s either out flat
whimpering in the deep, or trying to find
a better position, collapsing
like a heap of wooden blocks.
She dreams of chasing deer,
vaulting stone walls,
entire cellar holes,
rear paws click, click, clicking.

These last mornings, I feel
the tenuous, the fine,
thread between us, broken.
I’ve fallen away from you, for now.
You’re trailing something
scared up in the dark hours,
something that didn't occur
in my dreams on the hard upstairs boards —
your ceiling, my floor.

this poem first published on Flash Quake: http://www.flashquake.org/archive/vol3iss2/poetry/sleepingarrangements.html

Bio: Sarah Sousa is a poet and free-lance writer living in Western Maine. Her poetry has appeared in Wolf Moon Press, the anthology A Sense of Place, and is upcoming in The Anthology of New England Writers 2004 and Poetry Motel. Sarah will have a poem upcoming in Spire Press. Her essays and articles have appeared in Maine Times, Employment Times and Home Business Journal. She lives with her husband, a musician, and their two sons.