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.

MARILYN A. JOHNSON

Marilyn A. Johnson’s poetry has been published most recently in UCity Review, Plume, Pedestal, the Provincetown Independent, and Salamander. Her nonfiction books include The Dead Beat, a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and a Washington Irving Book Award winner. She lives in Briarcliff, New York, and at marilynjohnson.net.