Night Poem by Leslie Philibert

I cannot suck sleep out of the warm air,
a clothes runner killed before my bed,
numbers encode the darkness, they are not curved

and I reach for your hand, warm paper over chalk hills,
rivers that flow past sinews, tunnels leading to fingertips,
a map creased into your palm.

There are dragons over the main road, they have
moving eyes and heated wings, the night has locked
out gravity, I am full of feathers, falling up.