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Literary Art


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Sonata

Laura Sanger

Unused energy like arsenic burns through veins
Sparkles and crackles off ends and tips of flesh
I long to expel it all at once like some firecracker burst
But my body is uncooperative, making everything a battle
It's murmuring, it's whispering and rustling
And trying to flag down my racing brain.
I lose patience, submerse myself in a blue-green pool of pills,
Watery colored gel caps invoking watery vision, aquamarine sedation.
Red-hot electric veins are cooled
The sizzling sound of water
Flows up against burning metallic energy
That turns my veins to ticking, clanking pipes-
The steam cools, condenses on the inner walls of my skin...
My head is getting sleepy but my body knows it's a fraud.
My body's protest is an accusation and I worry
And I don't know what else to do NOT NOW.
So I try to relax -
Lying at the bottom of the blue-green pool-
And I wait, and at the edge of despair,
Sleep comes for me so tenderly, so mercifully.
I feel him nearing in the dark-
Then I'm gathered up, softly, weightlessly and timelessly,
Folded into him, wrapped and held in sable wings.
Wanting to weep with relief and lacking the strength,
I lay my head on his soft cool chest,
I close my eyes and he begins to whisper dreams in my ears.




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