When I sleep,

your voice drips down the walls like warm rain.

There is no sharp corners, no silence.

I breathe without falling apart.

In dreams,

you are not gone,

you are not distant,

you are simply there.

I can reach without disappearing.

I can touch you and nothing breaks.

The daylight lies.

It parades its facts like knives on a table:

You’re gone,

I’m empty,

the sky doesn’t notice.

But sleep—

sleep pulls the wires from my chest,

unbinds my scream that no one else can hear.

I smile there, and it isn’t a betrayal.

I speak, and someone listens.

Please, don’t wake me.

Don’t drag me back to pain that walks upright.

Let me sink like stone into the blue-black hush

where the world is kinder,

where the doors never lock,

where your hands are warm.

If there’s a God who watches,

let him come not with thunder but with a blanket.

Let him understand

that I’m not giving up,

I’m just going home.

Let me sleep.

Not for a while,

but forever.

Where dreams give back what life keeps stealing.