He twitches in his sleep, arguing with the sheets,

Fighting demons that hold his keys.

The shame of shame played out in unconscious conversations.

There’s no place for me here, in a crowded bed, things unseen

standing between us.

I kiss his back, but cannot penetrate the steel gates.

How fondly I remember a sleeping world extending from waking days.

Where bodies intertwined and danced the night to unimagined harmonies like puzzle pieces shifting to fit in a hundred different ways.

And here I awake to see the pattern laying before me.

To seek the cannot be loved, who think they don’t deserve it,

Who fight with invisible terrors within them.

What can be done?   With this role to perform?

To chase a sequence of mirages that once held -

slip like water through my outstretched hands,

Chasing ghosts of men only I can see.

Whispers and soft touches with the half there ones that somehow linger

to dance intermitantly with me.

In this bed I wonder, in this quiet to decipher, in my heart I hurt and heal..

Departing.. out of one room and into another..

To embrace.. the words – that ready me to face things unseen,

just before I go down, right before I come up.

For air.  Its the fourth round.