Talking in Your Sleep

I’m talking in your sleep
Now

Yesterday
You talked in mine

I’m talking
Now

And you sleep the sleep of the sleep deprived
Because you’ve spent all those nights
Talking me to sleep

When I talk in your sleep
I tell you all the love words you need in a language
You don’t speak
Because I know I can say it without saying it

But sometimes, when you’re breathing in my ear,
I tell you in your words
And I hold my breath, hoping
That you don’t wake too soon
Because it’s not so much that my Courage
Fails me
It’s that my cowardice
Overwhelms

And I fail you

You are a leaf and I am water on the path of least resistance
You are courage and I am not
Your love is a garden and my love is a gate
But I’m peering over, looking for you

I catch fireflies, secretly, in your garden
And I keep them in a glass jar
Until sunrise and I set them free and
Worry that they will die in the light

Like love

It fades in the light
Of reality
And fear and life and burden
So for now
I want to keep it in a jar
Bright in the night
A glass half-full of flickering hope

Hope without courage
Because I can’t face your Courage

Without hope