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.

MARIE ANNE ARREOLA

Marie Anne Arreola is a bilingual poet and editor whose work appears in journals across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. She is the author of Sparks of the Liberating Spirit Who Trapped Us (Foreshore, UK) and founding editor of VOCES, a bilingual platform for global artists and writers.