"Insomnia" by Harper Ladd

I am still awake, the city is dead.

The silent buildings like fallen wood

logs in which bugs reside. But they are glass.

Glimmering, all around. And I am flesh.

I am real, I tell myself. I am warm.

I repeat this to lull myself to sleep.

I wish we were all as we are in sleep;

simple children, uncomplicated. Dead

tones ring through my ears. Nothing is warm.

I wish I was home, body in the wood

sinking into rest, eventually flesh

becoming peat moss. But I am in glass.

On my windowsill there is a glass

wine bottle that I want to hug, break. Sleep

will not come. Shards of glass in my flesh

that I will carry until I am dead.

I knock on my collarbone, it’s a wood

door, I am a guest in this body. Warm

eyes, like a carcass baking in the warm

sun. I am separated by only glass

from being down there, amongst the sparse wood

of the decorative pine trees. Oh, sleep!

I beg myself. This plea falls upon dead

ears. I am so tired. Pavement and flesh

would mix well. Rot grows in me like fruit flesh.

Something ferments. I am a good host, warm

cavern where mold resides, turning the dead

to plant food. Alive. Cycles. Sand to glass

to sand to glass. It’s supposed to be sleep

to wake. I dream of when I am the wood

of a tree, soaking up bodies. The wood

that knows rest and rebirth. I bite the flesh

of my arm to prove I am real. Please, sleep.

Welcome me. I welcome you. You are warm.

I breathe, face pressed against the cool glass

of my window, clouding it. In the dead

of night, dead wood provides the bugs with warm

refuge. I am not for this world of glass.

Sleep can wait. It is mostly for the dead.

Harper Ladd is a student and cultural journalist based in Tiohtià:ke. Their work has been featured in Yolk.