Sleep Apnea
Five seconds or less. Regular as—
a clock, I almost said, but not a clock. I need
a horologist to suggest a timepiece less reliable
than Swiss works, less cumbersome than sundials
and hourglasses. I need some custom-made
instrument to measure irregular amounts of time,
and bursts of air pressure as unpredictable as grief,
the kind that sometimes pops up alongside joy.
It’s not up to me when I breathe, nor how deeply.
Nor why some ghosts refuse to leave.
They watch me sleep, counting the seconds
between each breath, waiting
for the long pause to grow a little longer.
In the perilous silence, they grow a little stronger.
Denton Loving’s most recent collection of poetry, Tamp (Mercer University Press) was named by Book Riot as one of the 10 Best Appalachian Books of 2023. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including Iron Horse Literary Review, Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Threepenny Review, and Ecotone. This poem first appeared in the Southern Poetry Review.