Sleep: Divinity School

Holly Pettit


You remind me of myself, the way
I was before I grew up, before I danced
too long in cheap shoes, drank too much
scotch, worked too hard for too little
money, used imagination as wallpaper,
found the devil on the highway
and followed his car all the way home. I sleep,

holding on fast to you like life, gripping
hard around the waist of a dream.

Waking, I remember
and then lose a wisp of voice
speaking in the next room
from beyond the night-drawn
curtain. The 3 a.m. sounds are abroad
now; plow-trucks prowl the streets,
scraping and lumbering,
bumping. I prop up, watch snow
fall through the streetlamp light of Mass Ave.,
filling the tracks of airport taxis. Your body
lies beside me dark, an empty
bark pulled up on shore.

A figure in front of Peabody
Museum throws his leg over a racing
bike, makes one steadying circle, then
heads out toward Kirkland, reappearing
under every streetlight
for the length of the block until
passing beyond the courtyard gate,
beyond the zoology
labs, between the particle
accelerator and the dark
parking lot of Divinity School.

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The 2River View, 2_4 (Summer 1998)