Knox Still
I rouse in the twilit way
where your eyes stay
closed but you’re wondering
if you’re awake or asleep
and the answer is that if you’re
able to wonder, it means
you’re awake.
The air is velvet with lavender and warm
soup and I hear the soft drone
of voices drifting from a speaker
and the rhythmic clack of Sylvie’s knitting
needles and it reminds me
of when I was very young
and lived in a house, how the branches
of the tree outside my window would tap
the glass in the right wind,
only reviving my desire to live
in a house again,
and it all feels more perfect than I have
any right to feel under my present
circumstances and so I lie
as still and silent as I can, like I’m sitting
on a park bench, watching a squirrel
cautiously approach me, the fate of the universe
hinging on whether I startle it.