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.

JODY CALLAHAN

Jody Callahan is a 2025 fiction contest finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards, and the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. A recipient of an Edith Wharton-–Straw Dog Writers residency, she has been published in Writer’s Digest, Southword, Gemini Magazine, The Rumpus, Epiphany, and elsewhere. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.