This is the way I sleep.
Always on light coloured linen, blue, white & pink.
The colours of babyhood & first light.
At Dubbo in the Zebra Motel, a voice came into the room,
Across the sleeping bodies of relatives.
It said, 'Who are you?
When I didn't answer it asked again.
So I pretended I was asleep.
The voice was unnatural.
I stopped breathing as a big hand landed on my foot.
The next morning I told my aunty.
She said, 'It was just an owl.'
'No,' I said, 'He was a ghost.' It was not mentioned again.
Sleep follows me into the day like a tinge of dawn trailing the sun.
Where I go into sleep, the butterflies can bite.
Do not hold onto me whilst I am fighting off monsters.
My mother was a chocoholic.
Before she went to bed,
She would take a bar of black cooking chocolate
& rub it across her teeth,
Like she was cleaning them with it.
All night she would suck it off.
So she wouldn't feel alone.
Then she was up rattling in the easter eggs on top of her wardrobe.
The way I sleep, is by shyly testing the borders of death.
My breath is shallow, barely brushing your neck.
Even when my big tired head is buried there,
I do not bother you.
Hours later you will feel the space.
Call out for a coffee from the bed.
Green light from the backyard pouring through an open door.
I am neck high in leaves, deep into the day.
The whistle of the kettle brings me in from the birds.
My grandmother woke me up at night,
On the government bus on the way home to Matraville,
To walk the steep dark hill to Boonah avenue.
I remember the cold May holidays & my aching legs.
The twenty four hour industrial flame,
Of the Kurnell refinery glowing on the streets.
This struggle on & off the public transport.
She said, 'You howled like a dog, like a mad woman.'
I was six, upset.
You cannot follow me into sleep.
For company I have the kind black rat with its tail cut off,
Who is in love with the Labrador pup.
