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.

DUSTIN BROOKSHIRE

Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth and latest chapbook is Repeat as Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2023) and editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024). Learn more at dustinbrookshire.com.