I’m safer
when I’m still,
sleeping or comatose
from something or other —

I don’t hurt myself
when I’m unconscious
because my mind
is my worst punishment — in there

there’s a whipman on a merry go round
and what passes over and over
leaves marks — so when I am
not using it, not allowing

the inquisition to roll
on and on,
I am snug
within —

let me sleep now,
my dreamless heart
blue from lack of oxygen
but otherwise unbruised; please,

let me sleep. Let me
go into the night.
Let me go the way anyone
goes who doesn’t know this —

and bless me that I will be
unfamiliar, one day,
with how it feels to prefer
dead calm to the whirl of day.