Can’t Sleep Anymore

Have you tried a bath before bed?
Shutting off the electronics?
Moderate exercise?
Yoga three times a week?
Daily meditation?
Cutting out gluten?
A total news fast?
Petting your dog continuously?
Walking until you can’t stand up any more…?
Yes—I hiss

How about lavender oil?
the fresh-faced thirty year-old
in a white coat asks

LAVENDER OIL?
I think, as a bolt of fury
sears a path through my core
down my inner thighs and
out my heels in a flash

How do I begin,
with this painfully young thing
who I imagine
sleeps eight or nine
uninterrupted hours a night?

I’m nearly sixty, and
there is no easy remedy
for the existential terror
that crashes into my heart
when I get up to pee
four or five times a night

my beloved trees burning
oceans rising
elephants weeping over their dead
living rain becoming dust or deluge—
crops desiccated in their fields
people starving
businessmen plotting
all the while politicians denying
the wailing despair
that my children’s unbridled hope
has died without a funeral
and their children’s innocence will die
before it has a chance to be born?

Yes
I’ve tried lavender oil, I lie.
it can’t touch what
keeps me awake at night
Do you have something stronger?

First published in The Beautiful Cadaver Anthology, Is it Hot in Here? 2019