Sleeping Sickness, I Couldn't Sleep

I could never sleep
With someone next to me
For three reasons:

The first
because I'm fearful
That you'll stop breathing in your sleep
The idea of you dying alone
Without someone next to you
Without anyone knowing how it happened
Did the breaths just stop?
Did your throat rattle?
Frightens me.
What if I could have woken you
Before you forgot to breathe again
What if I woke you
You remembered
And lived
What if
That's one reason.

The second is
The night leaves me a restless fiend
For open windows
and the sound of doors closing
The feeling of being the one turning the knob
Like a god, twisting the earth
to meet its other side
The moon calls me out
And I love her more, so I go
I want to die alone
I have no desire
to have anyone by my side
I want my last moments to be only mine
Die secret. Silent and shaking like old films.

Here, I love you most
Silent, open mouthed
And I know you love me
And I know you're a coward
But in the night
You are none of these and everything
I see the moon under your eyes and i
Want to love you
But you're asleep and I'm awake
I want to leave you before you notice
I have become so vulnerable
You're electricity in the bed
And I'm a puddle in the sheets
I become just like the others before me
My body- a copy, my soul is not present here
I become a traitor to my own body
I feel alone and ghostly
And I can't sleep because you might explode and kill me
And I do not want to die
With someone next to me
I don't want to be anyone's ghost
When I'm gone I want to be gone
A this time happening that will happen again
But not in this circumstance
Not with these people.

The third is that when I do sleep
I have nightmares of you leaving
Waking up and being left
No note, no explanation
As if you were not even a perception
As if your existence never mattered
Because it only came once
And it would make sense
for you to leave how you came
But you didn't come only once
You came again and again and again
I couldn't stand to watch you
die again and again and again
I'm scared to love you when you're awake
your open eyes carry mistakes
But they’re not mistakes at all
I want you to admit them
Smash your clock
Take off your clothes
And stare at me all night
To tease the day into forgetting
That it steals lovers away
That it makes the sound of alarm clocks
And car ignitions and keys
As if the night never mattered at all
I want to make love to you when the sun peaks
Sleepy, still drunken on moonbeams
Singing poems of single words in your ear
Mangito. Melon. Saboroso.
And you will eat them all up for breakfast
And the sun will be mad
That we are still together
Shameless.