Lady-in-Waiting

Small white rectangle, baby pink half,
the big one the color of Texas clay-
I’ve taken every remedy I have, in spite
of these tokens I still twitch and itch
all night till sunrise backs the blinds,
lightens the air. Under my bloody eyes
are half moons, bruised apple slices
where mischief must have been done.

Not by dancing, though this gown
is not the one I put to bed in
and my slippers are frazzled dull,
unless you’d call a toss and turn a jig,
a furtive pace a worn Whitsunday Ale,
the path to bathroom, kitchen sink,
and hall a shadowed tour of this house
where aegri somnia would be welcome.

I’m up and dozing, misled by a mantra
given in a head shop thirty years past,
my Kammatthana a work in progress.
I am distractible and a sorry pilgrim,
like a fat woman who nibbles at meals
found later gorging from cast-off plates,
there is no sense to the harm I do myself,
as the sky turns the color of baked brie.