Secrets
by Jessica Harman

Sleeping

In my sleep I built two cities,
earned a masters degree,
bought a work of art
like black on gold, wrote
a treatise on bees and flies, spoke about
coincidence,
the conical heart structure of butterflies,

destroyed the city of my birth,
forgot a language's worth,
told a few light-weight lies,

tried jogging for two weeks, earned a few thousand,
published a few poems, fell in
and out love, learned

how to stay away from a married man like
the neighbor's roses, and made
a work of art out of it. It will not always be
like this. One
day I will wake up, wonder
at the words I wrote

when I was in
deep sleep, working with the silvery
ethers of the moon as it pulled the whole weight

of the sea.