Thursday, 18 January 2024

Silke Feltz: 3 am

The desert heat and the moon and Brother Sleep, 
those three know how I toss and even my little toe 
wishes you were here right now. You’re awake, too– 
of course you are– as I curl into my restless duvet and 
picture how you press against me, forming a perfect 
question mark. We can’t meet in our weekend park, so 
we choose to believe we’re tired with eyes open wide. 

Only the desert heat and the moon and Brother Sleep 
listen to my heart beat where melancholic cicadas sing 
while you lie on your back in a foreign forest and you 
imagine my smaller body, the gift you refuse to unwrap 
slowly. You breathe deeply and wonder how my vegan 
skin smells and why these vulnerable, powder-pink pastels 
keep on crawling into your mula bandha, into your mind. 

When the desert heat and the moon and Brother Sleep smile 
because our last “Till soon” felt like some dramatic goodbye; 
when carefree fireflies begin to dance their silent disco for 
my delight and your endless summer days end earlier so night 
breaks ripples into your routine— then this is the exact moment 
when this desire between you and me seduces us to dream 
ourselves under the same sheet, where we feel less incomplete. 


Silke Feltz teaches writing at the University of Oklahoma and volunteers for Poetic Justice by facilitating poetry workshops in a women’s prison. Some of her poems found a home in Backwards Trajectory, Literary Veganism, Oddball Magazine, and Mockingheart Review. Apart from poetry, Silke researches food ethics and directs her humanitarian knitting charity, StreetKnits.