Reasons I Can't Sleep

Two cats squall in the dark trees behind the house. They sound like—what? A pair of alien babies raging at their lazy parents On and on it goes, they must be tearing each other to ragged furry bits I’ll find bloody fluff on the lawn. Beside me you lie listening too. The bills are due. The leaky tub. The mysterious must in the downstairs hall. And a number of nagging phone calls, some we made, some we should have but didn’t, some that come ringing when we’re just about to get out of the house, bringing news from various fronts from the west, reports on the latest tragedy—a double mastectomy, a fractured pelvis (she slipped on an airport floor), a mahogany breakfront that nobody wants or needs (call the salvation army, please!) From the east, it’s the child’s school calling, you didn’t send enough food for his lunch, she refuses to sit at the peanut-free table she used a four-letter word during writing time Shit, who wouldn’t It’s 3:14 The cats have stopped. You’re snoring. I’m spiraling endlessly from worry to memory and back dreams I should have let go everything I should have let go last time I saw him, my father looked so old I remember him driving his convertible GTO, driving us for ice cream with the ragtop down and now there’s only one thing I’d like to know how does it all go so fast when the night is so long so slow Debra Jo Immergut