Today's poem is by John A. Nieves

Quieting
       

Patient sleep ends here in the dry dark. The dehumidifier
has said all it is going to. I can feel the attic swell above
me like it is trying to rejoin the sky it used to be. But this

is a silent expansion—molecules opening out and away.
This is the way a habit dies, like taking a sip of water every
time my eyes flutter open, but now      the water is too far,

or my arms are too short, or I am only dreaming my eyes
wide. And this is what real change feels      like: only
the implication of tectonic rumbling, a fingerprint with no

hand in sight. Morning will come but it will not be the morning,
it will be another morning—a repopulation      of shadows
and colors and firmer epistemologies. But for now, this small

shift from stasis to tingling and a feeling of falling without
a soundtrack, without even the ability to make one, is all
and it empties the hall of distinction. It covers the windows

in something so forgetful the outside can't      even pretend
to get in.

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Copyright © 2023 John A. Nieves All rights reserved
from Sugar House Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission