Sleeping dolls, so-named for half a life,
know how hard it is to lay their heads
in anything but darkness. In each eye,
a tiny weight and swivel, ghost thread
pulled by gravity’s hand at the back.
Just what they see is anyone’s guess,
anyone’s prayer fastened to a sack
of bricks. Our first dream is nothing less,
seen from above like an unsigned letter.
So if one pulls your life a little farther
down the well, do not call it blindness.
Call it by her name, the one you gave her,
the exhausted child, the heedless, the weak,
who lay her head by yours. And in you, woke.