While I Was Sleeping

While I Was Sleeping

I have folded myself up in sleep
this morning, so that when I hear
your old car stop in the driveway
it's ancient engine wheezing like
an arthritic metal lung
the music jangling
a song from the 80's, time-warping
through cold air –

when I hear you opening
a jar of jam in the kitchen, smelling
secondhand the scent of apricots
toast for breakfast
the crushed camellia blossoms on your feet

as at last you climb the stairs
and slip into the bed beside me, pretending
that you were never gone –
I am awake enough only to turn my back
(a gesture made innocent by ignorance)
pulling my dreams around my ears like blankets
to keep out the cold.

Bubbles! So long since I read one of your poems! I must say, this was quite a treat. Simple but not simplistic - this evokes images well-known to everyone without a loss of originality. In fact, it is that very perception of the ordinary, that very way in which you ascribe significance to the minute that makes this a delight to read. You say just enough without saying too much, and the ending was perhaps my favourite part.

The beginning, by contrast, is so-so. What I like about it is how calm it is, how stable. It doesn't flaunt the imagery, it doesn't wave its arms about fakely. It's tangible. But on the other hand, it's almost bordering on dull, but not quite. So, I guess if I wasn't in the calm mood, ready for a slow ride, then I would not appreciate it as much. The second stanza, conversely, more than makes up for it. While the tone is very homemade, very down-to-earth here as well, it feels like the poem is on a lift up here - somehow jam jars and secondhand apricot smells are about the only thing that I can think of. They have this macroscopic importance that I cannot quite define.

And 'pulling my dreams around my ears like blankets' was fantastic. Not so sure about the last line - 'to keep out the cold.' Personally, I didn't feel that was needed. If someone pulls the blankets around themselves, that's usually why they do it, so that explanation was redundant. However, in a strange way, it also adds to the theme a lot more by its wonderful irony - I mean, of course it wasn't becuase of the cold that they did so! So, it makes us think a little. But for me, that took away from the cute abstraction of the line previous, making me overanalyse it. Think about what effect you're going for.

Anyway, thank you for the read. And once again - GREAT to see your poetry!

Hey bubbles.

I liked this, but found the dashes a bit odd. They seem to describe two different scenarios, when with the last stanza it makes more sense, chronologically, to have them be one continuing scene. I can see their use though, which is why I'm iffy about removing them. They add a sense of... I'm not sure how to describe it, but they make both stanzas all the more cutting that he's behaving this way. He doesn't just come home late, but he fixes himself a snack before coming into bed.

The breakfast scene though had a few images that seemed lost to me, such as "smelling secondhand the scent of apricots" and I'm having a hard time picturing the significance of this line: "the crushed camellia blossoms on your feet". It seems to indicate some sort of romantic adventure, but I'm wondering why this exact blossom and this wording. It seems too concrete an image for the setting; your first-person narrator can't know these blossoms are at his feet, can she? Unless she smells them, but, again, the image is too concrete to warrant her simply smelling them. This reads like she's actually seeing them.

The flow, however, was pretty fantastic. And I liked how the poem told such a multi-layred story (with the assumed-afair) along with the narrator keeping track of this while pretending to be asleep. It's a good concept and it was executed here with good flow. The second stanza just needs a little tweaking in my opinion.

Hope this helps, and PM me if you have any questions/comments.

~Rosey