Twelve.

A Sleep and a Forgetting

Our birth is but the sleep and the forgetting,
though sleep takes up the greater time and bathing
occasionally breaks up this pattern
of sleep, forgetting, sleep, forgetting, sleep,
whenever you slap water on your cheeks
and your dead skin sloughs off into the sewers.

It's not a bad life, really, one of setting
a schedule, then of sticking to it, only
remembering exceptions, as does the housecat
who always takes her meals without emotion
ever since that time you failed to feed her
for no apparent reason. Otherwise

that I've forgotten how it feels to love you
(those letters I found recently and read
again as crisp as slick dry skin on a pillow)
has kept me up nights, this past week or two,
in darkness--with no apparent tears to keep
your memory from fading into sleep.

-- John Gery