Berkeley Poetry Review: Hold me in Sleep

First Published in the Made at Home 2022 issue of the Berkeley Poetry Review.

Hold me in Sleep

my body is a quilt

stuffed and seeming 

patchwork of dramaturgy

each square a pattern I’ve 

wandered with busy fingers pricking 

spindles and arched neck hanging 

in the air, a survey of the lands

undone and redoing at all minutes

skins of sun parts and pale of private

hairs standing by charge of violins

strung by your silhouette in the every day 

undercovers soft hidden between 

layers for fright of cold, battened against 

the falling down feeling of floating apart

I wrap you in cotton, sound 

muffled by your filling center 

hold me 

wear me

thread us together

in stitches of laughter

long and unspooling in heaps 

of morning mischief, the weak 

light catching the streak of our

knitted limbs, our bleary eyes

I the blanket and you the bed

nothing is pressing but this