4 February 2008 | Vol. 7, No. 4

The Nyctophobe

by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

An illusion, but not. My cataplexy, and else.

Your obvious bone gone home to itself.

And I am left alone with the thousand oblivions

That float the jasperine seas of night.

It's a furnace of the first place, fever of mine.

The mattress can't be trusted. I suture shut my eyelids.

I align my terrors to their predetermined brinks.

But the bed that is my boat, slopes lee side,

Then sinks. I breathe through glued-on gills,

And krill swarm into my lungs. It's an unconscious

Christ who sleepwalks on water. I'm an atom

Not in her element. A delible, washed-away

Splotch on God's pavement. I rave a gape-

Jawed lament to a pagan's moon. Oh firmament.

Oh metaphor. Oh Father. Our lifetimes

Are too soon over. And sleep is for ghosts

And lovers. I'm alive, but only in error,

It seems. I dream but to distract me from

These things. But the black room's mood,

It haunts me like a revenant.

The disrevelry of unraveling never ends.

The vague and vagrant longings of a whipworm

Who is hostage to her host. In the dark, I miss you

Most. Hell is like a bed that's like a boat.