Seduced by Sleep

Ashley Ellen Goetz

Sleep, I’m in love with you. You are all that I think of; your stiff grips; grasping my cheeks; blanket folds; pulling me in close; heads touching sleeps cheeks; touching lip folds; hot ears; grasping backs; limbs stiff and taught; straining to open; unopen; unfold; under folds of sheets of blankets of dreams of stars in the sky in the universe in the cats eye in the dradle in the castle’s circle in the garden in the labyrinth in the synapse web in the wave crest in the honeysuckle; the dragonfly; hovering low over the water suds on the spray splash of swim tide; the sleep comes; it lingers, like a haze demon; a goo monster; a cloud that takes over your pale flesh, your marrow, your vibration, your toes, and places you in a psychedelic coma, a spiral dimension where time does not move linearly but on its own accord, slithering and bubbling and popping on its own terms and seeps out an oozing puddle of your soul into the sheets below as it relaxes your muscles with its wet grip.