Not a freewrite I actually intended this time around. Just an old improv (of William Stafford) I wanted to edit some. Italicized are things I want to change later.
Waking Up At Night
My fingers traverse blankets of darkness
and find disappointment in barren bedsheets.
I roll over, because staring at your empty pillow
usually evokes that Valentine's you forgot to get me a gift.
Thoughts pulse. I leave you a sliver in the back,
of junk drawers and drooping eyes, illuminated
by the translucent glow of a Droid,
your name and face dances light in nightmares
until it too disappears beyond the recesses of the backlight,
soon lost deep into the void of the frigid pillowcase. (delete?)
How could I forget I no longer own you?
My lease is up on that armed shelter.
The heat's been turned off, and the bedroom's flooding
but I never got a bill and there is no insurance
that you'll ever come back, I don't
want you back. I can't forget I left you
for reasons that turn the downy comforter
to tattered fragments of faked polyester blend.
I can't forget that all those times
I thought we slept in the finest linens
we were really squatting in muslin tunics,
until those too burned into wisps of hemp. I can't.
I don't forget the times you fell
silent on phone conversations as I spilled fears
into the receiver of a future I knew
might never happen, because of a past
that repeated on itself like a cross-stitch.
I won't forget the times that you yelled
"I'm still here" even though you were miles
ahead of me, in a memory of a girl
who might've stood a chance
if you met her first.
I can't forget your heat. I won't. I shouldn't.
I did.
I flip my pillow over to the cool side
to ease the tossing, and cease the turning
because I sleep better this way.
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