Late Morning

Every time I wake up it feels like my body
was built for drowning. The midday sun is dull
and cold as a winter ocean, the clouds
swaying listlessly in its waters. My mouth
is full of breath like sand, words stuck
in my jagged teeth. I can't tell the difference
between standing and falling.

I slide my numb fingers across the alarm
like a familiar lover, begging for one more hour
that never comes. I keep thinking that time,
like sex, like the fantasies I wake from,
passes into the back of our minds
until it closes, locks up in our memory and becomes
a fantasy itself. Maybe that's only

wishful thinking, something that makes sense
as I collapse back onto the bed trying
to re-enter whatever dream I was having.
I don't recall it now, but I'm certain
that, for the briefest moment, there were two
people in my bed, perhaps one of them was me,
and now I think, if you were there,
old lover, if you are awake out there,
you've almost remembered it, too.