Turning In
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
At night, when our bodies
Begin to slow down, and our eyelids
Become heavy, we turn in,
And our attention
Recedes from the senses,
And we move into ourselves and dream.
And we all know dreaming
Is just the soul saying what it wanted
During the day but couldn’t,
And as we are drawn inwards,
And our breathing drifts like it was meant to,
And we rescind control over our bodies,
And our lips part and our palms open,
And our arms go this way and that,
We begin catching z’s—the buzz
Of fluorescent lights becomes the buzz of bees
Making honey out of our disappointments,
The hum of the fan of our laptops
Becomes the hush of owl’s wings,
And we yield like this every day–
Every day we relinquish the tenuous hold
We have on our lives and surrender
To the darkness living within us—
The selfsame darkness that holds the voice of desire–
Speaking like a lighthouse to approaching ships,
Speaking like the hummingbird daring us
To try and follow where it goes,
Speaking like moonlight on the river,
Speaking like our soul bowing down before us
Aching for us to listen.
