Five Lessons on the Fluid Dynamics of Sleep ~ Anna Spence

Gravitational Attraction

Sleep flows westward. The moon pulls it deeper here, draws the darkness up over the world’s

rocky shoulder, hunched against the creeping light.

Geology

There are deep esker furrows where an old, horned god dragged his glacial claws through the

silt and rocky moraine as he went reluctantly away. Brackish sleep is kettle-laked in his

fingerprints, unpotable and scummed with single-celled teeming.

The Curvature of the Earth

In the depths of the western sleeps, I watch the sun wobble prismatic on the distant surface.

Above, in the east, the industrious are scoured to virtue by new light. They are already

making things: coffee, decisions, millions.

Buoyancy

Adrift in a drowned orchard, I serpent through the cramped cursive of the trees. Although the

moonlight is bright, this sky is so deep and so heavy. I follow the tumbling downward drift of

tidefall apples, each one a diminuating O.

Neurology

Sleep paralysis is the weight of accumulated seas.

Bio:

Anna Spence is an academic by day and a writer by compulsion. Her work appears in Ellipsis Zine, Emerge Literary Journal, Scissors & Spackle and Elephants Never. She can be found on Twitter @MSSalieri