Every night in sleep,
I journey to the Land of Nod.

Where strangely, my senses suspend about—
exists separately, yet a part of me.

Like post-it notes on a cork-board—
memories in sleep are not my own, but reminders of something long past.

Time in Nod is like a dog without a master
to hold its leash, behind and sometimes ahead.

Will my longing find you in this land of glass streams and playful mists?
Do you anticipate my steps?

I can’t find the sun in Nod,
yet briefly my focus finds gravity to question, why can I see so clearly?

I can never find you pass the screaming brooks
or the concentrated green landscape that binds Nod.

Yet whenever I travel to Nod,
I believe myself to be an expected visitor,

since you always appear,
when I forget to search.

Patiently, you wait while I rediscover your tender smile,
relearn your protective arms, and your brush-stroke collarbones.

The familiar flush of heat along my skin
as I remember to love this stranger, you once more.

Even as I make plans to live forever in Nod,
the once fair light becomes a mantle of light

and violently obscures my new memories.
It thrusts me from Nod,

with an odd tingle at the corners of my eyes, that follows me day to year.