The Sleeping
by Jacinta V. White

There are some who are meant to sleep
and live inside dreams. They come

as visitors to carry
messages from there to now.

You know them. The baby who looks
deeply into your eyes while stealing your heart.

The lover who hypnotizes you,
the old man who speaks in riddles

before falling off to sleep. We shake
them out of selfish yearnings but

do not wake them or chastise them
for not being among the woke.

Some need to sleep so that others
will know what it is like to be alive.

 

“The Sleeping” by Jacinta V. White, from Resurrecting the Bones. Press 53 © 2019.