Reset Forty, Day Two

[rejectomorph]

All day (after I woke after noon) Saturday the wad of cottonwool inside my head absorbed whatever I heard whatever I thought (or thought I thought) and blurred my vision. There's been a hint of an earache coming for me, a distressing threat from the distant past. I hated earaches above all else when I was a kid, and haven't had one for decades, but have dreaded their likely return. Whenever an ear presents me with a twinge I worry that this is it, that awful day. But it has remained only a twinge. Some day my luck will run out, but apparently not yet. It's not likely that the wad of cottonwool inside my head is related. That's a whole other thing, far more and increasingly common. Perhaps my brain will seize up before the full earache ever returns. I could get lucky. But probably not.




Sunday Verse

Serenade

Kevin Young


I wake to the cracked plate
of moon being thrown

across the room-
that'll fix me

for trying sleep.
Lately even night

has left me-
now even the machine

that makes the rain
has stopped sending

the sun away.
It is late,

or early, depending-

who's to say.
Who's to name

these ragged stars, this
light that waters

down the insomniac dark
before I down

it myself.
Sleep, I swear

there's no one else-
raise me up

in the near-night
& set me like

a tin toy to work,
clanking in the bare

broken bright.