Cool, Sober Nights

"I have sleepless friends
and on cool, sober nights,
with rain steady as biology,
their backs yearn for my umbrella hands,
how I snake down their spines
soothing them into sleep with my massages,
fading their nightmares into cough-syrup comas."

"With memories of stuck pills
haunting their throats, my friends rub their eyes,
tearing over in the pain in my absence.
I allow myself to dote on them when possible,
but my schedule twists and morphs regularly,
I can only play nurse for so long before my life
calls me back: I go to work, I want to rest,
but my friends keep losing weight, too tired to eat,
and need my massages to sleep."

"And I'll yield. In the rain I'll cross the city
without an umbrella, without a raincoat,
(because I own neither)
to tend to a friend with my hand-medicine
despite how they ignore what I endure
helping them. My clothes, drenched, drip
up flights of stairs, I climb past elevator doors
with 'out of order' signs taped on, mocking me."

"Sometimes I fantasize denying them my magic,
watching them huddle into corners
of their beds, drawing the covers, crying,
begging me to touch them, to quiet, just for a moment,
the monsters of discomfort and insomnia plaguing
their frail bodies. I imagine their sickly, gray-green skin
drying out and ashing off, only the skeletons left,
the bones begging for back rubs and the faceless skulls
looking like they would bite me if I tried. But I yield.
I close my eyes tight to escape the fantasies and
sure as spring sunshine, I yield to my sleepless friends"