Sound & Fury Poem by Sean McDowell

––hands folded behind my head, awake at 2 am
on an old mattress
that will retain my form long after I rise.
I watch rain stagger down my window,
thinking it will soon shatter, and come down on me
water and glass––indiscernible.
Sometimes I think I want to see myself glitter
with such severity. Overhead,
the fan, unbalanced, strikes its base to the ceiling
every second rotation. It is
a heart beating through spinning shadow

to supplant my own.
Later, with the storm disengaged, I will dream
of the lilies of the field,
of how they will never know what it is
to watch your own funeral pyre burn in slow motion:
they will never know what it is to be human––