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.

SARA RITTER

Sara Ritter was an emerging poet and a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. A recent graduate of Pacific University, she completed an MFA in Poetry (2024). She has been published in the Poets of the Coast Anthology (2023) and served as a competition judge for the Writer’s Circle Desert Poets.