When I Cannot Sleep
There are days when I cannot sleep
I lie awake and dream a waking dream
But sometimes dreaming is not all that it seems
Dreams can be wishes and hopes for the future
Dreams can be healing and life saving sutures
But they can be longing for a time that will never be
Of hopes and wishes we will never see
Of lives that will never leave the dream
Sometimes dreaming is not all that it seems
Dreams that only live at night
And never see the light
Are like the cruelest lovers
Who lie with us under covers
Who whisper pretty things
With a voice that always sings
The sweetest melody
Lingering in memory
And then morning arrives
And no more are those lives
With song and rhyme and melodies
Only broken sutures and pain and maladies
The trick of it all, these waking dreams
Are that we know we are awake
We are not tricked by the beams
Of the light that morning makes
We know what we are dreaming are lies
And we are able to dread the sunrise
Living in real time
The pain, sublime
The anxiety and the dream
Are a nearly balanced team
Where the lovely things win sometimes
Then as morning comes and there are no more rhymes
The anxiety breaks the balance beam
Before the dream had time to grow more than just a dream
A waking dream lives in the night
While we can still know that it is wrong
That the trance will shrivel in sunlight
And our lovers will no longer sing their song
But as dreamers do, we cannot stop
The lives we lead at night rising to the top
When we are at our weakest
After the day has worn us down
And to live in reality seems defeatist
Without the dreams, we’d surely drown
Our minds have the power to transcend
To give the harsh edges a bend
To block the constant barrage
To still the calls of sabotage
To catch the projectiles in flight
That assail us in the night
Seeping into the light
But perhaps, we can learn to live in the light
Though what we dream may not take flight
We can still snatch a win in this fight
Squeeze past the barriers tight
This light may not look like our dreams in the night
But maybe what we live is in between
Something not wrong, just not quite right
We may not live to be queens
That may be beyond our sight
But the life we have is the life we make
If we only dream dreams and life forsake
We surrender our potential
To be something essential
To someone who loves us
We might even be missed
Though it feels above us,
To think someone might love us
If we only look up,
They are enough
It is the people we cannot replace
When we dream of that place
Our imaginations cannot capture
The ones that we enrapture
We have not the power to know
The true love that grows
In our friends, family, and lovers
Who can still whisper from out of the covers
Who can still sing, who will try, for us, to be louder
Than the people in that tower
They cannot heal our wounds for us
But they can send a raft to shore us
Just when we are drowning
See, people notice when we are frowning
If we stayed in the dream they would miss us
It’s hard to know that’s true, easy to distrust
But if we have power to believe in the dream
We can redirect that power to help seal our seams
If we let them, they can place the sutures
They can dream of futures
For us when we see none
They will never be done
Like dreams when night comes
They will not leave with each sun
They will follow us into the night
And again into light
It is the people we cannot dream
No imagination is so keen
To feel the feeling of being seen
When someone sees us drowning
When they notice we are frowning
Perhaps they even see us lying awake
And they try to sing that they will never forsake
But we are too stuck in our heads
To see how the edges bend
When they are there to help
To lay our sorrows on the shelf
To rest for a while and sleep
While the night watch, they will keep.
It is the people we cannot dream
Not imagination is so keen
To construct the feeling of being loved
Of looking up above
The feeling of embrace
That can still make our weak heart race
When there are days I cannot sleep
When I lay awake counting sheep
I remember there are people who would miss me
If I chose the eternal sleep
There are people in the light who love me
Through the night and light they love me
Through long hard fights they love me
When they see my hard edges they love me
When they fight my defenses they love me
When the see me shine, they love me
When they see my darkness, they love me
They tell me to look up above me
For someone who will always love me.
Now I will rest a while and sleep
While the night watch He will keep.
…
