Craig Morgan Teicher

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NIGHTS

1

The light is fuzzy as if in a dream. You stumble down to the edge of the beach—every bird bears its own coin, every wave its own moon. You show yourself like a tooth to the sea. It is late and your knee is bleeding profusely—you are giddy and faint. You wake up strapped to a hospital bed. You wake up beneath a tree. You wake up at home, beside someone beautiful, as if in a breathtaking dream. Then you wake up at home. You shuffle to the kitchen and finish the cake. Then you wake up addressing a discomforted crowd. You stumble off to the hotel bar. You stumble off to the edge of the sea. The birds return with news from abroad. The waves come in and are gone. You wake up with a headache and a strange black bruise. You wake up in a place that is dark and immune. You search for a light in the sky. You see the Earth suspended overhead, blue and as small as the moon.

2

You wake up someplace blindingly clean—a million Earths can fit in your eye. Serrated beams of bright white light pierce your blistering flesh, blasting away today’s oily emotions. In their place is one white feeling, a sense that every wall is blasted away, that the rooms go on and on, unblemished, unadorned, undefined, like the deepest core of a wren-shaped cloud. You remain aloft because bright white crows, their feathers and bodies blasted away, clutch invisible tethers in their bright white blasted beaks. If they drop you, you don’t know. You wake up drowning in an ice-filled lake. A breath has been yanked from your chest. The organ for fear is your numinous lung, a moist bulb of chalk that whispers your name. You are white and oily and young.

3

The light is fake like hospital light. You have never felt this greased. You are instructed to move a mountain but instead you move your arm. A nurse swabs you with a foul swab and sets each limb in an embarrassing cast. Your eyes are pasted and the holes for your nose misflavor the medical air. You wake up in a room no bigger than you. You are instructed to utter a wish. Rescued and taunted by your rescuers, you are ordered to utter a name for your pain. Your voice is gawky and cheap. You wake up in a room where a candle goes out and know you are not meant to sleep.