Waking after sleeping late

Sean McMenemy, "Unmade Bed"

I toss, roll over, sit up, and find the gifts I’ve been given even
more inexplicable than what’s usual for me: the dog-whistle
of tinnitus, a dream in which I was generous with a stranger
and still afraid, a chaotic origami made of candy wrappers.

My ears are full of distant crickets chirring as I think about
that dream, its almost-familiar highways ending in run-down
neighborhoods. It’s as if Kurt Schwitters was Mr. Sandman,
snipping bits from every place I’ve ever been and pasting them

together catawampus across my forehead as I slept so they’d
infuse my dreaming soul. There’s a rustle at the edge of the bed.
The wrapper from a hard candy I sucked on overnight has become
wedged under my hip, crumpling nothing like a folded crane.

Convalescence

Willrad von Doomenstein, "Window at Night"

It’s the “almost home” part of the journey
for this prodigal: I spent what I had to spend,
not quite every last bit but near enough to
feel the air moving through my bones. Hard
to stop myself—sometimes it takes running
to the edge of a horizon, to where I can’t tell
whether that one thin coin I tossed was a dime
or the moon. I can see in my mind’s eye the
doorstep: I’m so weak from this fading illness,
from the relief of return. I steady myself with
a hand on the entryway. The porch light’s on.