You Cannot Sleep (After Frank Bidart’s “You Cannot Rest”)
by Taryn Ocko
Your goal was to be something that you could not be, by being somebody else entirely, free from the world’s court of blank stares. Your plan was to reveal your face (its folds unfolding), by hiding behind a paper sheet you’ve torn from your bed because you cannot sleep. Instead you stay awake, dreaming of all of the faces you’ve met (whose folds unfold or stay folded). Their scars line up with yours, fit together like broken glass that she and he and all of them smashed.
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