Murdering Sleep
Voices in her head said
"Do it."
And she threw her son
into the green, gray water
like a catch too small to keep.
He was three.
Someone found his body today
floating near Richardson Bay.
My three-year old
has, for five nights,
endured
asthma, earache,
bad medicine
that tunes him
to a higher pitch,
tosses him restlessly in his bed,
then into my own.
Voices tell me
to throw him
into his own undulating blankets
and undersea dreams,
let him cough himself awake
without me. My arm,
sore from his insistent head,
my back stretched tight like piano wire, then
he settles, lungs rasping,
as the musk of his soft hair
floats and I breathe in
breathe out
in rhythm
in time.
Paul Totah 3/12/96
revised: 7/8/97