Sleep Journal

The story that needs to be told
is the one recited in his sleep. 
He wants to carry it into the day
but its words won’t wake with him. 

Now when he speaks, it sounds
like a cracked bell, and the doors
he opens ache on their hinges,
an echo diminishing, the trace 

of a road erased from a map. 
When he asks for directions, 
they always lead to where the rain
drives its nails into the ground.

ANGELA JOYNES

Angela Joynes is a disabled Canadian writer living in Tennessee. Her words have appeared in the West Trestle Review, Ilanot Review, National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies, Flash Flood, Susurrus Literary Journal, Trash Cat Literary, and Bright Flash Literary Review, among other places.