At this hour I cannot sleep. Insomnia gahh-gahh-ring. And you realize we write poems to replace the people we love or should love but cannot hear what we say. A display of affection is only a display. No one knows the names and in such elusive secrecy, we feel a little safe to indulge in confessing sweet nothings we create.

Title: At This Hour

At this hour, I feel even more afraid.
But there is no one I can talk to.
At this hour, everybody's dead.
There is something I want to ask.
At this hour, I can muster a little courage.
There is something I want to say.
But at this hour, you are not awake.

Why do we always have to struggle
in our own little secret ways?
Why must pain go unheard,
the unbearable ache from
naked souls whose hearts break?
Why must words go unheard,
trailing into the promise of night's gates?

Breathing out a feather of breath
into the coldness of frozen air,
watching it fall on trembling feet.
Watching you fall from my mind.
A figment of fading imagination.
Someone like you that whispers
into the breeze and slips away.

But there is something I want to say.
Please stay if only for a moment. Wait.
At this hour, I feel you slipping away.
At this hour, you are not awake.
And I cannot seem to run away.
I have slept for far too many days,
dreamt too many listless dreams,
to be able to rise to your hiding place.

At this hour, I feel even more afraid.
But there is no one I can talk to.
Distance scatters snow on a summer's day.
To knock on the door of another realm
and be unable to slide myself in
the way you brush past me now and again.
To want to reach you. In vain.