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.

KERRY TRAUTMAN

Kerry Trautman (she/her) is a lifelong Ohioan whose poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her books are: Things That Come in Boxes; To Have Hoped; Artifacts; To Be Nonchalantly Alive; Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas; Unknowable Things; and Irregulars. More at linktr.ee/OhioKerry.