Half-Asleep

I read you my poems when you are half-asleep
Because I am so terrified of your commentary.
A word from you could unravel me,
Leaving me as yarn in a new labyrinth.
Or as Hansel’s crumbs of cake:
Eaten, letting you become lost.

Sometimes I love you best when you are half-asleep
When you are childish and you need me
To cushion you and cover you and rock you
With the succour of my words.
It comes so easily to me. You are sweet,
You are mine, you are so sweet.

Yawning, opening out your insides
To welcome in dreams, you tell me “don’t read me
Another bloody one about relationships”.
But my love, that’s all there can ever be.
If not the relationship between you and me
Then the relation of life and death or the sky
And the thundering, unslumbering sea.
The relationship between red/yellow/blue
On the painter’s palette.
The relationship of this word to that.
Behind our backs, every word is fucking.

I read you my poems when you are half-asleep
Because then, everything is floating.
If you are whispering your way into the wilds
Of rest then you cannot trace too keenly
The ways in which I betray my love for you.
A word from you could unravel me.