Asleep

He’s sick of lies.
He’s sick of fables.
He’s sick of stories
that help children go to sleep at night.

He wants what’s real.
He wants what’s true.
He wants the nothing
that is everything
that he sees in you.

One night,
the child had a dream.
He closed his eyes,
and everything disappeared.

He screamed
for his mommy to save him,
but she had gone to sleep.
She couldn’t hear.

The child
tried waking up.
His eyelids fluttered,
but he was stuck.

He slept.
The nightmare
went on forever.
He woke up.

Everybody else had gone to sleep.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
(from the poetry collection The Tree Outside My Window)

Click here to hear the poem as performed by Ursprung Collective.