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Ann Tobias Karson<br />
Hearing You Sleep<br />
Ann Tobias Karson • Hearing You Sleep<br />
Some nights I lie awake<br />
and hear you fall asleep.<br />
At first, I hear you thinking:<br />
slight tension in your breath.<br />
Your movements, irregular,<br />
punctuate thoughts left over from your day.<br />
Slowly, your breath takes on<br />
a metered rhythm, regular and heavy,<br />
and soon you lie beside me<br />
relaxed and still.<br />
Sometimes, I train my breath<br />
to echo yours. I<br />
slide within my mind as if on sand,<br />
slipping down dunes, my body weight<br />
adding to my fall.<br />
Later, you stir and mumble<br />
as dreams take up your thoughts<br />
and mingle them with feelings.<br />
I hear you, feel you dreaming,<br />
but I cannot hear or see your dream.<br />
Even my own’s elusive. Waking, I know<br />
the night’s adventures happened:<br />
fragments remain which I may try<br />
to capture for a curious daytime mind.<br />
Infrequently, I recall<br />
a dream which did not slip away<br />
with the sand of sleep as others did.<br />
Often, whatever meaning it holds<br />
remains mysterious.<br />
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