Insomnia

Kathryn Jones

December 30, 2021

Be still, my unquiet mind;

do not go down that dark hallway,

doors on each side half open, 

beckoning me to enter

rooms with faces floating in the wallpaper.

Echoes and creaks and a stifled scream –

I have been there too many times.

I close my eyes, pray for sleep.

Outside the moon slides below the clouds,

throws a dagger of light across my face.

My eyes flutter open; I look out the window.

A creature rustles in the garden;

irises sway like violet ghosts.

I toss back the covers. 

It’s coming. 

I get up, go to the kitchen, pour a glass of water. 

An invisible icy hand rests on my shoulder;

I shudder and wrap myself in a robe.

The clock ticks, the pendulum swings,

the kitchen faucet drips and so does my mind,

counting off the things I must do tomorrow

but tomorrow is already today.

I surrender and retreat to bed. 

The moon sets, the rays no longer pierce my pillow.

The garden is still, the wind chimes tinkle. 

The doors close, the faces fade into the wallpaper.

I fall into a deep sleep and dream…

Artists paint naked people in a strange room;

spies chase me with guns; I’m sick in a hospital

with a tube down my throat. I run to the edge

of an abyss and start falling, falling, falling….

I jolt awake, soaked with sweat,

relieved to see sunlight and a brief reprieve.

Then the afternoon shadows lengthen,

the day dwindles again,

the carousel begins spinning in my head,

horses frozen in gallop, nostrils flared,

chasing each other around in circles.

I hold on, eyes shut, but I do not sleep.  

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.