Deep Sleep
You slept all the time those last few months.
I'd find you stretched out on the couch with your hands just so
and you'd startle, asking where I'd come from, as if
I'd com from afar-another planet, and why not?
Such a strange girl from the get go.
Was it deep--this sleep?
Though by then, there were all the tangles, what is called tau.
And we were just treading in the deep end, being asked to
use a pencil to draw from one point to another. And failing.
Down to where the body's temperature cools
and the brain does its cleansing--is where we should aim
for, they say.
And, so, the dark, chill room.
And the sound of waves, if we like, if they will soothe.
And we'll wake, having said we never dreamt.
Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, Court Green and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest.
Website: https://www.krsamuels.com/
Instagram: @kellyrsamuels
Tau (in biochemistry) is “a protein associated with microtubules and implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.” I’ve heard of this protein but never it had a name. And so I draw connection between the image of these tangles and the wavering lines between two points.
Dreams are complicated. So is sleeping. It’s interesting how some people are much more adept at sleeping deeply while others struggle with a peaceful, night’s sleep.