Insomnia

Every night I lie in bed and practice my posture.  

Every day I hope I die before dark.

 

Marilyn hangs over my headboard.

It is not because I, like everyone else, fantasize about her

 

as I struggle for sleep,

my body rigid next to yours.

 

You do not understand

why I lay with my eyes wide after sex;

 

you do not understand

why I kick in my sleep, screeching shards of glass in the dark—

 

call it a nightmare;

you can’t understand.

 

Everyone dubbed her a sex goddess

but that’s too simple.

 

She understands how it feels to jolt awake

in the midst of your own monstrous screams.

 

She understands how it feels

to stare bleary-eyed through a mental institution’s safety glass

 

at the one person who could never quite love you

because he couldn’t understand.

 

Only I ever noticed

that she was distant, that she was alive, that she wanted to die.

 

I see her understanding

in her frozen lip, mid quiver and in her destroyed pupils.

 

She understands because

her hand shakes when she drops sleeping pills into her whiskey sour,

 

but she does it anyway,

because how else would she survive the night?

 

·        

 

I write Ask Marilyn on a pad of paper

and set the pill bottle over her name.

 

When you come, I will be, same as always,

straight-backed and stiff in bed

 

but now, eyes delicately closed

and finally peacefully silent.

 

You will try

but you will never understand.

BY JAKE BAUER