Insomnia

I try tearing paper into tiny, perfect squares—
they cut my fingers. Warm milk, perhaps,
stirred counter-clockwise in a cast iron pan—
but even then there's burning at the edges,
angry foam-hiss. I've been told
to put trumpet flowers under my pillow,
I do: stamen up, the old crone said.
But the pollen stains, and there are bees,
I swear, in those long yellow chambers, echoing,
the way the house does, mocking, with its longevity—
each rib creaking and bending where I'm likely to break—
I try floating out along the long O of lone,
to where it flattens to loss, and just stay there
disconnecting the dots of my night sky
as one would take apart a house made of sticks,
carefully, last addition to first,
like sheep leaping backward into their pens.

Copyright © 2007 Rynn Williams All rights reserved
from Columbia Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission