Select Comfort-A Syllabic poem

Syllabic poem= where each line has the same number of syllables. An interesting exercise in restraint to be sure.

Select Comfort

These are the nights I
appreciate my
new queen-sized mattress
and the rituals
involved in sleeping
next to another.
At first, I wanted
guidelines, directions.
What about nightmares,
tossing and turning,
endless bickering?
Easily enough
they became parts of
a nightly routine:
you lie next to me,
we pretend to sleep
until it happens,
we do not have sex
unless we want to.
Political, yet
sympathetic to
the truce we make when
we undress, and brush
our teeth, wash taut
faces. The hygiene
of self and other—
examination—
judgments forgotten
when you turn the light
in the bathroom off
and slip under the
covers that hold me,
house us like orphans.
This is our retreat
from stress and pressures,
my weakness lying
next to your body.
Our hearts listening
for the other’s beat
while our body heat—
exoskeleton
fills in-between space.
Light breaths harmonize
yet not in tandem.
Shut eyes imagine
how we now appear:
tired, unguarded,
graven images
softly releasing
domestic incense—
I have never felt
such skin like parchment.
Forgive me for that
rude comparison
to preserved calf skin.
Don’t think of yourself
as the sacrifice,
you, an offering
to a night that has
brought us together,
but at such a subtle
cost that unnerves me.
A special terror
of mine betrays this
closeness, for I can’t
help but think that I
might wake up alone,
your shape having been
flatten into the
wrinkles in the sheets
sometime before dawn.
I would never sleep again
if given the choice
to watch you sleeping,
to know you would stay
here lying near me
the rest of your days.
My willingness, then,
to close my eyes, sleep
my back echoing
the promise in yours,
is my neglected prayer
that you will stay here,
and stems from the fact
that I cannot watch
time slowly take us
away from this place.
I am afraid to
witness your passing,
though it is rehearsed
practiced endlessly,
by time’s bipolar
flipping the light switch
that moves us from here
to the day after
by no personal
means or decisions.
Do you stay here when....?
In my dreams, teach me
to awake from what
I cannot leave yet.