Didn’t Mean, Didn’t

by Leonore Wilson

True knowledge comes down to vigils in the darkness: the sum of our insomnias alone distinguishes us from the animals and from our kind. What rich or strange idea was ever the work of a sleeper? E.M.Cioran, A Short History of Decay (1949)

I longed for      touch               health

longed for            a thimble     of breath

of fallow deer              red-shouldered hawk   

coyote’s call    of poured out              prayer

I lived              rooted to          shadow           

sheets  sweat   tangled            until I divorced          

myself             from     imprisoned     routine            

cried out         to the low-watt             God   

relinquished    my heart          to the unruffled

deacon   his docile wife          who drove me  

to emergency     where a   great motherly       nurse  

asked me         if and   how     I          wanted to take            

my life             while you    son       on university leave        

sat next to me     and I didn’t     want to say     did ,

didn’t              I had no plan   only     a sometime-ruse

to drive off      cliff nearby      like the neighbor  

who only succeeded       in breaking               her wrist:        

I said               without sleep   I had no           will     

I didn’t mean   didn’t   child               the only way to be      

51/50d             where a new    drug     I hadn’t tried  

might fix         my mind

I listened         and      listened      to   the       treble             

of the   clock    while   the armed        guard   

stood watch      as if    I were              a   villain         a criminal

 a danger         to myself          or others;

and I wondered           if          any crumbs      of rest 

lay ahead     and          what     head-shrinking                         wizard           

would              Dorothy-me     back    to Kansas.…

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Leonore Wilson is a college English and creative writing teacher from Northern California. She is on the MFA Board at St Mary’s College of California. Her poetry books are Western Solstice (Hireath Press) and Tremendum, Augustum (Kelsey Press). Leonore’s work has been in The Iowa Review, Third Coast, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Upstreet, Madison Review, Laurel Review, Pif, etc. Her historic cattle ranch and family home in Napa Valley were recently destroyed in the LNU fire.