Sleep is such a risky thing
knowing what the night may bring.
What visitations may come
before the rising of the sun.

What creature’s lidless eyes may peer
from ravaged face that once was dear.
What fetid draft may mist your cheek
redolent with graveyard reek.

Whose scrabbling fingers, jointed bone,
struggle for purchase on your own.
The twilight grin and tender touch
once adored, now missed so much.

But not the one from your mind’s eye
this fragment left when he did die,
beckoning with fleshless arms,
hungry for your mortal charms.

Leaching color from your skin,
a lipless kiss, a rictus grin.
Soundless whispers in your mind
trap you in this fevered time.

In sleep is when he comes to hold
a body free of coffin-mold,
when lust survives the fleshly state,
when bones and dust still wish to mate.