December rain sneaks into a sleep that may
or might not have been. Gentle, with enough of a breath
to be noticed, yet crafty enough to remain unknown.
Window open slightly, the world from
the other side of the curtains
seeps into your space. If sleep is sleep, or has it been?
Wide-eyed now, hands reaching upwards, grasping at clouds
and the residue that comes with the season. Emotions,
struggling with premonitions of silence, you attempt
to fashion thoughts into dreams
of what you want or where you’ve seen
or what you wish, or what might have been.
It’s not bright, not this time of day. There can’t be a moon,
not one you can see anyway.
Clouds and thoughts, and your restless ways
fighting the fever for hours and for days.
You might seem so strong and still, right now, who can say.
Lucent thought, lenient waves, comfort you enough to stay
tangled in the life you knew
in this sleep, just not all the way through.
Who you are, or what you want
the raindrops fall, the memories taunt.
Night is only a time for precious remembrances. No one can hear
what you think, perhaps no one can know. Not even you.
A life imagined. You can’t turn it off, or
turn it down, or see your way to shut out the view.
The only one is you. Trying to speak the words
you need to feel, you come up silent against
the rain’s steady peel. It’s takes over, it always does.
December rain. It’s not the same. The chill
cannot be the temperature, you are wrapped in the blankets,
pillows pushed aside in a heap, as they are when you sleep.
A rest that is not now, for if it were
would you hear your heartbeat, or remember
all that you dream? Or is it ever as it seems.
The steady rhythm never forgets, patterns of the past
come back slowly. It’s wet, its cold, the memory is old
but it is right there. Remember.
Of course you do, of course you have,
you cannot spend all those waking hours in
wonder, and not have it come rushing back.
When you’re ready for mercy,
December rain seems to know.
It crashes against the silence and the mystery it holds.
© 2015 j.g. lewis
We cling to memories, even
