collapse, and
you can't
get to sleep,
instead of
the cheap stuff
like blessings
or sheep,
try counting
the billions
of other people's
eyelids—
those delicate,
intimate,
crepe paper-
textured things,
careworn
but dignified
as a second-
prize rose—
which, up to
this minute, have
crumpled
and closed—
not reflexive-
or self-possessedly,
not in brief or
by design,
but both helpless-
and definitively:
for the very
last time.
