in parentheses

If it was morning I couldn’t tell beneath the inky abyss of my eyelids,

couldn’t tell that it was you, stood right beside me,

tall, white and wide-eyed

looking across my shoulders

and looking to crack a joke as I marched myself awake

in a slow parade

over the ever-expanding crack of my eyes,

light moving through the canyon like cool molasses,

unleashed across the earth from some undocumented origin.

But I wanted to stay sleeping,

wanted to tell you that I missed the abyss,

endlessly turning over in a bottomless grave

that looked so black it’d look white sometimes

and that you were just a nail I left to rust

on a sad and sandy shore in my most restless sleep;

I told tall tales from dusk ‘til morning’;

I liked you better in my dreams.