Beauty Sleep

Days like this I want to stay asleep,

so I do.

I've become almost gruesome, microwaving single-serve

bags of frozen peas and letting entire 

crock pots of gumbo and pulled pork

turn to penicillin in the refrigerator.

But I'm running out of fridge space, so I've come up with a plan.

I will hire a construction team to build me a tower,

and a landscape architect to cover it in ivy.

Then I'll knock over a Walgreen's pharmacy

and steal a year's supply of Ambien.

Someone promised me, this is how 

you end up happy. Perch high in a campanile
and learn to be beautiful in it. Every so many hours,

take a pill and fall back asleep. Dream

of almost nothing but tintinnabulation. 

Stay drowsy until someone wants to kiss you,
and then up and marry
the first person to fight through your brambles.

It seems as good a strategy as online dating.

But what if it's some brute with a sword

who is the lucky winner? After all, the easiest
way to hack through defenses is with a sword.
I would have to prick my finger. I'd bleed for a hundred years.

But maybe instead it will be someone soft enough

to slip quietly through my protective ivies.

Someone who will not mind when I cry

about crises I should have gotten over in high school.

Maybe she will be drawn to me

not because I have more warning labels 

than the Ambien I stole, 

but because we like the same species of caladium,
broad and pink and reaching,

and she sees familiarity in my imperfections,

and I see in her a good reason to stay awake.

But I could be waiting for a really long time.
Who even knows what caladiums are?
I certainly won't find her sitting in this tower.

No,
I will flush the pills nobody ever prescribed me
and I will leave the tower via the stairs.
I will learn to ask for what I need
instead of hoping it climbs up to rescue me.
In fact, I will be outside after the show.
Come talk to me?
We can stay awake all night.